Kinoingan

Kinoingan, also recorded as Kinorohingan or Kinohiringan, is the almighty creator deity at the centre of Momolianism, the traditional religion of the Kadazan and Dusun peoples of Sabah in northern Borneo. With his consort Suminundu he dwells in the celestial realm of Libabou; together they form the sky, the earth, the sacred mountain (Mount Kinabalu) and the first human beings. The defining episode of the tradition is his sacrifice of their daughter Huminodun during a famine: from her dismembered body spring rice and the other staple crops. Scholars note a genuine ambiguity in the name: the late Sabahan statesman Herman Luping argued that the indigenous title for the creator was Minamangun ('the Maker') and that 'Kinoingan' was generalised as the word for God under later Christian influence, while in some Penampang traditions Kinoingan is instead the semi-divine first man paired with Suminundu rather than the high god. The ethnographic record from Evans, Rutter and Williams nonetheless consistently presents him as the creating power behind the Kadazan-Dusun world.

Children

• Huminodun

Domains

• creation of the world
• sky and heaven

Powers

• to create the sky, the earth and the first human beings

Epithets

• Minamangun

Relations

• spouse: Suminundu

Sources

• Evans, I. H. N. (1953). The Religion of the Tempasuk Dusuns of North Borneo. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Low Kok On (2006). 'Reading Symbols and Mythical Landscape in the Tambunan Dusun Origin Myth of North Borneo.' IJAPS 2(2): 29-50.
• Rutter, Owen (1929). The Pagans of North Borneo. London: Hutchinson & Co.