Trickster Hero of the Upperworld

Sangumang is the best-known trickster of Ngaju Dayak oral literature. In a cycle of at least ten recorded tales he uses wit and stratagem to fool his uncle, the king, and secure wealth and status. The tales set him and his counterpart, the fool Bapa Paloi, in the upperworld, linking the folktale corpus to the mythological cosmology of the Ngaju.

Domains

• cunning trickery

Powers

• to outwit kings and the powerful through cunning stratagems

Sources

• Klokke-Coster, A., A. H. Klokke and M. Saha. De slimme en de domme: Ngadju-Dajakse volksverhalen. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1976.
• Klokke, Arnoud H. (ed.). Fishing, Hunting and Headhunting in the Former Culture of the Ngaju Dayak in Central Kalimantan. Phillips, ME: Borneo Research Council, 2004.