Deva

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.

Domains

• sky
• creation
• oaths and truth

Powers

• reigns in the sky above the world
• witnesses truth and guarantees oaths

Epithets

• Ga'e Déva — Lord GodGregory Forth, Beneath the Volcano (KITLV Press, 1998) (secondary)
• Déva zéta — God on highGregory Forth, Beneath the Volcano (KITLV Press, 1998) (secondary)

Relations

• spouse: NituThe luminous celestial pole paired with the chthonic earth-power in the cosmological dyad; the marital reading is one of several attested understandings.Paul Arndt, 'Die Religion der Nad'a (Flores),' Anthropos 24–26 (1929–1931), on the sky/earth divine pairing (secondary)

Sources

• Deva is the supreme sky-being of the Nage and Ngadha, a distant creator and witness of oaths invoked opposite the chthonic power of the earth.: Gregory Forth, Beneath the Volcano: Religion, Cosmology and Spirit Classification among the Nage of Eastern Indonesia (Leiden: KITLV Press, 1998) (secondary); Paul Arndt, 'Die Religion der Nad'a (Flores),' Anthropos 24–26 (1929–1931) (secondary)