Trickster Hero of the Upperworld
Dayak · numen · primordial / creation · Recorded classification
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
- Sangumang is the cunning trickster hero of the Ngaju Dayak folktale cycle, an upperworld figure who repeatedly outwits his uncle the king.: Klokke-Coster, A., A. H. Klokke and M. Saha. De slimme en de domme: Ngadju-Dajakse volksverhalen. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1976. (secondary); 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. (secondary)