Nitu names the chthonic counterpart of the sky-god Deva: the power of the earth, the underground and the collective dead, to whom the land ultimately belongs. In the cosmological formula 'Deva above, nitu below' the word marks the earth pole of the universe, and in the Ngadha tradition recorded by early ethnographers it is personified as a female earth-principle set against the male sky. Cultivators must seek the permission of the nitu who own a tract of ground before clearing or planting it, and the recently dead pass into the company of these beings; named founding ancestors are honoured nearby at the paired megalithic monuments, the male ngadhu post and the female bhaga house. Sources differ on whether nitu denotes a single earth-mother consort of Deva or, as later Nage ethnography stresses, an open class of land-spirits and ghosts of the dead rather than one named deity; the dyadic invocation and the discrete spirit-class coexist in living usage.