Creator God

Supreme creator-deity of the indigenous Khasi religion (Niam Khasi / Ka Niam Tre). Treated as genderless/formless in the tradition, though the honorific 'U' is grammatically masculine. Khasi is written in the Latin/Roman script (since the 19th-c. Welsh mission orthography), so the term value uses Latin script. Gurdon 1907 is the standard colonial ethnography.

Domains

• creation and supreme sovereignty
• providence and moral order

Powers

• create and design the whole universe
• convene the divine council and apportion the clans
• governs the world through divine decree (Ka Hukum)

Epithets

• U Blei Nongthaw latin · U Blei Nongthaw · cultGod the Creator; the maker who set the world in orderKhasi ethnography (P. R. T. Gurdon, The Khasis) (secondary)

Relations

• ancestor of: The Seven Huts (first human clans)Supreme creator U Blei Nongthaw, from whom the Seven Huts (hynñiew trep) — the first human clans — descended down the sacred ladder; the clans already register him as their ancestor.Gurdon, P. R. T., 'The Khasis' (1907); Mawrie, H. O., 'The Khasi Milieu' (1981), the Hynñiew Trep descent myth (secondary)

Sources

• The Khasi recognise one formless supreme creator, U Blei Nongthaw (U Blei Nongbuh-Nongthaw, 'God the Planner and Maker'), source of the universe and of moral order.: P. R. T. Gurdon, The Khasis, Macmillan, 1907 (ethnography)