Mebuyan is the goddess of the Bagobo underworld, Gimokudan, the land of the dead beneath the earth. Sister of Lumabat, she refused to ascend to the sky; seating herself in a rice mortar and scattering rice, she sank down through the ground to the world below, over which she rules. Her body is covered from head to foot with breasts, at which she suckles the spirits of infants who die before they can eat, keeping them until they are grown; she also bathes the souls of the dead in a black river so that they forget the living and do not return. She is remembered in the observances of death and mourning.