Mu Kaw li

Mu Kaw li is the deceiver of Karen cosmogony, the being who in the oral fall-hymn induces the first human pair to eat the 'fruit of trial' set by Y'wa, so bringing sickness, old age and death into a world that had known none. Structurally the figure occupies the place the serpent or tempter holds in other traditions, and missionary collectors from Francis Mason onward drew the parallel explicitly. Sources differ on Mu Kaw li's gender and substance: the hymn's pronouns are ambiguous, and later interpreters have read the name variously as a personification of evil, a distinct primordial spirit, or a serpentine seducer, while a strand of popular retelling recasts the same name as an ancestress. What the texts agree on is the narrative office, that of the one whose deceit undid the first obedience owed to Y'wa.

Domains

• deception
• death

Powers

• deceived the first human pair into eating the fruit of trial

Epithets

• Mu Kaw li — the deceiverFrancis Mason, 'Religion, Mythology, and Astronomy among the Karens,' JASB 34 (1865): 175 (primary)

Relations

• enemy: Tha NaiDeceiver of the first man.H. I. Marshall, The Karen People of Burma (1922), 211 (secondary)
• enemy: Ee-uDeceiver of the first woman.H. I. Marshall, The Karen People of Burma (1922), 211 (secondary)

Sources

• In the Karen fall-hymn recorded by Mason and Marshall, Mu Kaw li is the primordial being who deceives the first human pair into eating the forbidden fruit, thereby introducing sickness, ageing and death.: Francis Mason, 'Religion, Mythology, and Astronomy among the Karens,' JASB 34 (1865): 174-176 (primary); H. I. Marshall, The Karen People of Burma (1922), 211-212 (secondary)
• Sources differ on the gender and precise nature of Mu Kaw li, some treating the name as a personification of evil, others as a distinct primordial spirit or serpentine tempter.: Mikael Gravers, 'Conversion and Identity,' in Exploring Ethnic Diversity in Burma (2007), 235 (secondary)