Pathian
Pathian is the supreme being of the indigenous Mizo faith (Sakhua / Khua worship) practised across the Lushai Hills before the Christian conversion of the 1890s. He is the creator and sustainer of the cosmos, dwelling in the heavens (van), kind-hearted and ready to help those who seek him, blessing the upright and visiting calamity on the wrongdoer. Early ethnographers such as John Shakespear recorded him simply as 'the Creator', and missionary lexicographer J.H. Lorrain fixed 'Pathian' as the Mizo word for God, which the Mizo Bible later adopted. Although everyday ritual life was largely taken up with appeasing lesser nature-spirits, Pathian remained the remote, beneficent head of the divine order. He is paired with the mother-goddess Khuanu, often understood as the loving feminine face of his own nature, and within the heavenly household stands above the sky-grandfather Pu Vana and the rain-maiden Vanchungnula.
Parentage
Children
Domains
- creation and cosmos
- sky and heaven
- divine justice and providence
Powers
- to create the world and all living things
- to bestow good fortune on the righteous and misfortune on the wicked
Epithets
- Khua
Relations
- spouse: Khuanu
Sources
- J. Shakespear, The Lushei Kuki Clans (London: Macmillan, 1912), Part II, 'Religion'.
- Lalsangkima Pachuau, 'Mizo "Sakhua" in Transition: Change and Continuity from Primal Religion to Christianity', Missiology: An International Review 34, no. 1 (2006): 41-57.
- Billy J. Zorinthara, 'Spirit in Creation: Mizo Primal Cosmology and Its Implications for Anthropogenic Climate Change Concern', Studies in World Christianity 30, no. 1 (2024), DOI 10.3366/swc.2024.0461.