Patotoqe, Determiner of Fate of the Upperworld

Patotoqe, also called Datu Patoto and by the epithet To Palanroe ('the Creator'), is the highest deity of the pre-Islamic Bugis pantheon as preserved in the Sureq I La Galigo of South Sulawesi. Enthroned in the Upperworld Boting Langiq, he is the apportioner of fate (toto) for gods and mortals alike. When his counsellors report that the Middleworld lies empty between sky and sea, Patotoqe summons the rulers of the realms and resolves that it must be inhabited by beings of divine descent; he sends his eldest son Batara Guru down to the land of Luwuq to become the first human ruler, and arranges a bride for him from the Underworld. He stands at the head of the genealogy from which the entire human world of the epic descends.

Children

• Batara Guru, the First to Descend to the Middleworld

Domains

• fate and destiny
• sky and upperworld
• creation and cosmic order

Powers

• to apportion the fates and destinies of gods and humankind
• to decree the peopling of the empty Middleworld

Epithets

• To Palanroé
• Datu Patotoé

Relations

• spouse: Datu Palingeq, Queen of the Upperworld

Sources

• Sirtjo Koolhof, 'The La Galigo: A Bugis Encyclopaedia and its Growth', Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 155, no. 3 (1999): 362–387.
• Christian Pelras, The Bugis (Oxford and Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1996), chap. 3, 'The world of myth'.