Pinsbkan

Pinsbkan is the sacred origin-rock of a large part of the Atayal nation. In the emergence myth the primordial stone bursts open and the first human beings step forth, from whom the lineages spread out across the mountains; Atayal genealogical tradition remembers Pinsbkan as the point from which the ancestors migrated in successive waves to their later valleys. The site is localized in the highlands of Nantou, near Ruiyan in present-day Ren'ai. Sources differ on whether the true place of origin was Pinsbkan or the crag Papak-Waqa, and different groups preserve the memory differently, but in both traditions the ancestors are born not of a womb but of the living rock of the homeland.

Domains

• creation and origins

Powers

• brings forth the first ancestors from stone

Sources

• Many Atayal groups trace their origin to the rock Pinsbkan (in the Ren'ai/Ruiyan area of Nantou), from which the ancestors emerged when the stone split open.: Ogawa Naoyoshi & Asai Erin, The Myths and Traditions of the Formosan Native Tribes (原語による台湾高砂族伝説集), 1935 (primary); Liao Shou-chen (廖守臣), The Culture of the Atayal: Tribal Migration and Expansion (泰雅族的文化：部落遷徙與拓展), 1984 — Pinsbkan as ancestral point of dispersal (secondary)