Sirijunga, the Deified Giver of the Script

Sirijunga fuses a legendary ninth-century Limbu king with the historical eighteenth-century sage Te-ongsi Sirijunga Xin Thebe, held to be his reincarnation. Credited with reviving the Limbu writing system and with gathering, composing and transcribing the Mundhum, he was killed for his cultural revival and thereafter venerated as a divine culture-hero of learning within the Yumaist tradition, where shrines are dedicated to Teongsi Sirijunga.

Domains

• writing and sacred learning
• preservation of the mundhum

Powers

• to give and revive the sacred script
• to return across ages by reincarnation

Epithets

• Te-ongsiTanka Bahadur Subba, Politics of Culture: A Study of Three Kirata Communities in the Eastern Himalayas (Chennai: Orient Longman, 1999) (secondary)

Relations

• subordinate to: Grandmother GoddessHe was consecrated as a Muhigum Ongsi, a celibate priest devoted to the teachings of the grandmother-goddess Yuma, and his cult remains embedded within her Yumaist worship.J.R. Subba, The Philosophy and Teachings of Yumaism (Gangtok: Yakthung Mundhum Saplopa, 2012) (secondary)

Sources

• Sirijunga is the deified Limbu culture-hero, believed reincarnation of the ninth-century king Sirijonga, who revived the Limbu script and transcribed the Mundhum and is venerated within Yumaism as a divine patron of writing and wisdom.: Tanka Bahadur Subba, Politics of Culture: A Study of Three Kirata Communities in the Eastern Himalayas (Chennai: Orient Longman, 1999) (secondary); J.R. Subba, The Philosophy and Teachings of Yumaism (Gangtok: Yakthung Mundhum Saplopa, 2012) (secondary)