Dab Pog Couple

The Dab Pog couple, in fuller address Nkawm Niam Txiv Dab Pog, are a married pair of benevolent spirits, a grandmother and grandfather who live in a richly detailed and populous spirit world. Hmong tradition holds that they bring the souls of children to their parents on earth and then serve as guardians of those children as they grow toward adulthood. The story told of them relates that at the beginning of time the couple instructed the Hmong in the performance of their rituals, so that their traces run through Hmong ceremonial life from the soul-calling held on the third morning after a birth, at which they are summoned to welcome the baby and thanked for granting the child, through wedding usages to the final rites. In modern devotion their child-giving office overlaps with that of Lady Kab Yeeb, the Hmong Guanyin, with whom they are jointly invoked.

Domains

• childbirth
• child protection

Powers

• to bring the souls of children from the spirit world to their parents on earth
• to teach humankind the rites of birth, marriage and death
• to guard growing children until they reach adulthood

Epithets

• Nkawm Niam Txiv Dab PogKao-Ly Yang, 'The Meeting with Guanyin, the Goddess of Mercy: A Case Study of Syncretism in the Hmong System of Beliefs', Hmong Studies Journal 7 (2006), 1-42 (secondary)

Relations

• equated with: Lady Bestower of ChildrenIn the soul-calling rite the child-bestowing office of the Dab Pog couple is shared with, and in syncretic practice merged into, Lady Kab Yeeb, whom scholarship treats as a Guanyin figure grafted onto this indigenous pair.Kao-Ly Yang, 'The Meeting with Guanyin, the Goddess of Mercy: A Case Study of Syncretism in the Hmong System of Beliefs', Hmong Studies Journal 7 (2006), 1-42 (secondary); Dia Cha, 'The Hmong "Dab Pog Couple" Story and its Significance in Arriving at an Understanding of Hmong Ritual', Hmong Studies Journal 4 (2003), 1-20 (secondary)

Sources

• The Dab Pog couple are the grandmother-and-grandfather spirit pair of the Hmong spirit world who bring the souls of children to their parents on earth, guard the young as they grow, and are credited with first teaching the Hmong their rituals.: Dia Cha, 'The Hmong "Dab Pog Couple" Story and its Significance in Arriving at an Understanding of Hmong Ritual', Hmong Studies Journal 4 (2003), 1-20 (secondary); Kao-Ly Yang, 'The Meeting with Guanyin, the Goddess of Mercy: A Case Study of Syncretism in the Hmong System of Beliefs', Hmong Studies Journal 7 (2006), 1-42 (secondary)