Aê Diê

Aê Diê is the supreme sky-deity and maker of the Ede (Rade), the greatest of the yang who govern the visible and invisible world. His name joins the honorific aê, 'grandfather' or 'lord', to a root associated with heaven, and he is regularly invoked in the fixed pairing Aê Du Aê Diê, so that the two grandfather-gods form a single creative authority addressed at sacrifices and in the opening invocations of the versified customary law. He shapes and animates human beings and oversees the order of the living. In the epic of Đăm Săn he dwells above the earth and is sought out by the hero, who climbs to the sky to obtain from him the remedy that restores his two wives after their sacred tree is cut down. Sources differ on the precise division of function between Aê Diê and Aê Du, some treating them as a single power under two names, others as elder and younger.

Domains

• sky
• creation

Powers

• shapes and gives life to mankind
• grants remedies and revival from the sky

Epithets

• Aê Du Aê Diê — Grandfather Du, Grandfather Diê (the supreme pair)Hauteclocque-Howe, Les Rhadés (1987). (secondary)
• Pô Yang — Lord of the spiritsOscar Salemink, The Ethnography of Vietnam's Central Highlanders (2003), on Highland yang belief. (secondary)

Relations

• companion: Aê DuInvoked together as the supreme creator dyad.Hauteclocque-Howe, Les Rhadés (1987), on the invocation 'Aê Du Aê Diê'. (secondary)

Sources

• Aê Diê is the supreme sky-lord and creator of the Ede, the highest of the yang, frequently paired with Aê Du and invoked in prayer, sacrifice and epic.: Anne de Hauteclocque-Howe, Les Rhadés: une société de droit maternel (Paris: CNRS, 1987). (secondary); Léopold Sabatier (coll.), La Chanson de Damsan (Paris, 1927). (primary)