Nhiãperikuli

Nhiãperikuli, known across the Içana and Aiary as Iñapirríkuli, Ñapirikoli or by the epithet Made-from-Bone, is the supreme creator-transformer of Baniwa cosmology. Born with his brothers from a bone in a world reduced to chaos, he remakes the cosmos: he subdues the devouring animal-people, separates humans from beasts, and lays down the laws of harmony among people, spirits and nature. His deeds are as much those of a trickster as of a demiurge, for he defeats his murderous affines through cunning and transformation rather than strength. He fathers Kuwai through a purely mental, shamanic union with Amaru, and it is he who fashions the first sacred flutes and trumpets from the ashes of Kuwai and who authorizes shamans and prophets to act as his emissaries on earth.

Children

• Kuwai

Domains

• cosmogony
• transformation

Powers

• creates and orders the world from chaos
• outwits and transforms hostile beings

Epithets

• Made-from-Bone — He who was formed inside the boneJonathan D. Hill, Made-from-Bone (2009), title and Introduction. (secondary)

Relations

• sibling: DzuliferiDzuliferi is his elder brother-shaman.Robin M. Wright, Mysteries of the Jaguar Shamans of the Northwest Amazon (2013). (secondary)
• sibling: KuwaikaniriKuwaikaniri is his younger brother, whose death introduced mortality.Robin M. Wright, Cosmos, Self, and History in Baniwa Religion (1998). (secondary)
• sibling: HeeriSome narrators count the Sun, Heeri, among his brothers.Francy Fontes Baniwa & Francisco Fontes Baniwa, Heeri: o Sol Baniwa (Selvagem ciclo de estudos, 2024). (primary)
• spouse: AmaruHis union with Amaru, from which Kuwai came into being, was purely cognitive and shamanic.Robin M. Wright, The Kuwai Religions of Northern Arawak-Speaking Peoples (Boletín de Antropología, Universidad de Antioquia, 2017). (secondary)

Sources

• Nhiãperikuli is the supreme creator-transformer of the Baniwa, who emerged from a bone to recreate the world and establish cosmic order.: Robin M. Wright, Cosmos, Self, and History in Baniwa Religion: For Those Unborn (University of Texas Press, 1998). (secondary); Jonathan D. Hill, Made-from-Bone: Trickster Myths, Music, and History from the Amazon (University of Illinois Press, 2009). (secondary)
• His name is glossed as 'He Inside the Bone' among the Baniwa of the Aiary and Içana.: Theodor Koch-Grünberg, Aruak-Sprachen Nordwestbrasiliens und der angrenzenden Gebiete (Mitteilungen der Anthropologischen Gesellschaft in Wien, 1911). (primary)