Lady Bestower of Children

Niam Nkauj Kab Yeeb, Lady Kab Yeeb or Kaying, is a celestial goddess who dwells in the world above, where she watches over the souls of children waiting to be born. Couples who long for offspring pray to her, and when a child is born the officiant of the soul-calling ceremony held on the third morning announces that Lady Kab Yeeb has sent the child to loving parents, thanks her, and calls the infant's soul firmly into its body. She is also invoked over frail, slow-growing or sickly children and over women who cannot conceive, serves among the helping spirits of the shaman, and is remembered as the conductor of the souls of children who die young. Scholarship identifies her as the Chinese bodhisattva Guanyin, the goddess of mercy, taken over by the Hmong in China together with her roles as bestower and guardian of children, and merged in practice with the indigenous grandmother-and-grandfather birth spirits, the Dab Pog couple. Parents still give her name, Kab Yeeb, to newborn daughters in her honour.

Domains

• children
• unborn souls

Powers

• to send the souls of children to couples who pray for offspring
• to keep and guard the souls of children in the sky before birth and after early death

Epithets

• Niam Nkauj Kab Yeeb

Relations

• equated with: Dab Pog Couple

Sources

• 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
• 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