Hia, the First Ancestor of Nias

Hia, honoured by the title Hia Walangi Adu, is the founding ancestor (zatua) of the Ono Niha in the widely told origin narrative of the upper Gomo valley. According to oral tradition he descended to earth from the heavenly upper world of Lowalangi, settling at Sifalagö Gomo and founding the village of Orahili-Gomo; from him and the Gomo region the clans of Nias are said to have spread southward across the island. He is remembered as the pioneer of the adu — the carved ancestor-images — and is credited with completing the first adu zatua, an act commemorated in his name and regarded as the beginning of the indigenous ancestor cult (folohe adu) that stood at the heart of Nias religion. As a sky-descended culture-hero who founds society and cult, he bridges the divine order of Lowalangi and the human world of his Niasan descendants.

Domains

• founding ancestry
• ancestor cult and statuary

Powers

• to found the settlements and clans of the Nias people
• to carve the first ancestor-image and institute the ancestor cult

Epithets

• Hia Walangi AduAndrew Beatty, Society and Exchange in Nias (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992) (secondary)

Relations

• subordinate to: Lowalangi, Lord of the Upper WorldHia descends to earth from the heavenly upper world ruled by Lowalangi, into whose order of creation the Niasan ancestry is set.Andrew Beatty, Society and Exchange in Nias (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992) (secondary)

Sources

• Hia (Hia Walangi Adu) is the founding ancestor of the Nias people, who descended from the upper world to Sifalagö Gomo, established the first settlements and clans, and instituted the cult of carved ancestor-images.: Andrew Beatty, Society and Exchange in Nias (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992) (secondary); Jerome Feldman (ed.), The Eloquent Dead: Ancestral Sculpture of Indonesia and Southeast Asia (Los Angeles: Fowler Museum of Cultural History, University of California, 1985) (secondary)