Nubu
Nubu is the good or benevolent creator of the Ngäbe (Guaymí), the divine counterpart to Noncomala's destruction. When Noncomala drowned the world in a flood, Nubu rescued the seed of a man; when the waters dried he sowed it in the earth, and from the best seed sprang a renewed race of true Ngäbe while the imperfect seed produced the monkeys, an aetiology that simultaneously explains human origins, ethnic difference, and the kinship of people and primates. The episode was reported by the seventeenth-century missionary Adrián de Santo Tomás (Adrián de Ufeldre) and entered comparative folklore through Frazer. In contemporary Ngäbe religion Nubu's role merges with that of the high god Ngöbö, the Ngäbere term for God, who is venerated as creator of the universe and giver of life to the earth.
Domains
- creation of humankind
- preservation and renewal
Powers
- to preserve the seed of humankind through the flood
- to create the true Ngäbe from good seed
Epithets
- NubuFrazer, James George. Folk-lore in the Old Testament, vol. 1. London: Macmillan, 1918, p. 263. (secondary)
Relations
- ally: NgöböIn living Ngäbe tradition the benevolent creator Nubu is paired with, and frequently identified with, the high god Ngöbö, the two together filling the creator-and-protector role.Alphonse, Ephraim S. Guaymí Grammar and Dictionary, with Some Ethnological Notes. Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 162. Washington: Smithsonian Institution, 1956. (secondary)
Sources
- Nubu is the benevolent Ngäbe (Guaymí) creator-god who preserved the seed of man through Noncomala's flood and raised from it the true Ngäbe (and the monkeys from imperfect seed).: Frazer, James George. Folk-lore in the Old Testament, vol. 1. London: Macmillan, 1918, p. 263. (secondary); Frazer, James George. The Worship of Nature, vol. 1. London: Macmillan, 1926, pp. 633-635. (secondary)