Ungambikula
The ungambikula — a name Spencer and Gillen translated 'out of nothing' or 'self-existing' — are the two uncreated beings of the Eastern Arrernte creation account in The Native Tribes of Central Australia (1899). Before them lay the inapertwa, rudimentary proto-human bundles in which the outline of a body could barely be traced, grouped along the shore of a primordial salt sea, unable to see, hear, or eat. Coming down from their home in the western sky with their lalira (stone knives), the ungambikula took the inapertwa one by one and carved them into men and women, freeing the limbs, opening the senses, and dividing the fingers and toes, so that each became a person of a particular totem. Their work done, they turned themselves into small fly-catching lizards, the amunga-quiniaquinia (from amunga 'a fly' and quiniaquinia 'to snap up quickly'). Because they are named only as a pair, they are recorded collectively; in Spencer and Gillen's later 1927 account their creative role is largely taken over by the single self-existing Numbakulla.
Domains
- creation of humankind
- lizard ancestors
Powers
- to carve the first humans from the half-formed inapertwa
- to transform into fly-catching lizards
Relations
- counterpart of: Mangar-kunjer-kunjaThe ungambikula of Spencer and Gillen's Eastern Arrernte account and Mangar-kunjer-kunja of Carl Strehlow's Western Aranda account are parallel lizard-associated creators who each cut the fused proto-humans apart with a stone knife to make the first people.Sam D. Gill, Storytracking: Texts, Stories, and Histories in Central Australia (Oxford University Press, 1998). (secondary)
Sources
- The ungambikula are two self-existing ('out of nothing') sky-beings who descended with stone knives, shaped the formless inapertwa into the first humans of each totem, and then became fly-catching lizards.: Baldwin Spencer and F.J. Gillen, The Native Tribes of Central Australia (London: Macmillan, 1899). (secondary); Sam D. Gill, Storytracking: Texts, Stories, and Histories in Central Australia (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998). (secondary)