Sonba'i

Sonba'i is the great ancestral sovereign of the western Atoni highlands, at once a mytho-historical founder and the eponym of the paramount ruling house of the interior. In Atoni sacred kingship the Great Sonba'i is the atupas, the 'sleeping lord', who must remain immobile and secluded at the ritual centre; his stillness holds the order of the realm as the sky-lord holds the order of the cosmos, and the fertility of the land is bound to the le'u gathered in his person and heirlooms. Because he cannot act, the day-to-day exercise of rule falls to an executive counterpart. The figure stands at the meeting of legend and history: the name is documented in oral charters of descent and sacred regalia and in the recorded politics of the western Meto states alike.

Domains

• sacred kingship
• sovereignty and paramountcy
• ancestral authority

Powers

• concentrates sacred potency for the realm
• embodies cosmic order through ritual immobility

Epithets

• Atupas — the Sleeping Lord (the immobile sacred sovereign)Schulte Nordholt, H.G. (1971), The Political System of the Atoni of Timor (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff) (secondary)

Relations

• ally: OematanSacred immobile lord paired with the active executive ruler in a single dual sovereignty.Schulte Nordholt, H.G. (1971), The Political System of the Atoni of Timor (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff) (secondary)

Sources

• Sonba'i is the ancestral paramount sovereign and ruling house of the western Meto interior, the 'immobile' or sleeping lord (atupas) whose person concentrates sacred potency (le'u) and whose sovereignty mirrors that of Uis Neno.: Schulte Nordholt, H.G. (1971), The Political System of the Atoni of Timor (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff), chapters on the Sonbai realm and sacred kingship (secondary)