Deva is the supreme being of the Nage and Ngadha of central Flores, identified with the sky and the light of day and addressed as the ultimate source and witness of human life. Invocations set him against the chthonic power of the earth in the formula 'Deva above, nitu below,' expressing a cosmos divided between a luminous celestial sovereign and the dark domain of the land and the dead. Nage usage commonly prefixes the honorific ga'e ('lord') to yield Ga'e Deva, and treats the god as a remote, largely inactive creator who guarantees truth and oaths rather than intervening in daily affairs. The name belongs to a widespread Austronesian and ultimately Sanskritic word for divinity that reached the region through Malay. Sources differ on whether the sky-being and the earth-power form a married couple, a single androgynous godhead, or two independent poles of a dual classification.