Mawulu Tau, Majii Tau

The supreme divinity of the Marapu religion of Sumba is a single creator conceived as both male and female and dwelling in the sky. It is addressed almost exclusively through paired ritual couplets, the most characteristic being 'Mawulu Tau, Majii Tau' — 'the one who plaited humankind, the one who moulded humankind' — which figures human origin as a двойной craft act of knotting and casting. The same being is invoked as 'Ina Bokulu, Ama Bokulu' or 'Ina Kalada, Ama Kalada,' 'the Great Mother, the Great Father,' and it is from this androgynous source that the divided cosmos of sky and earth, upperworld and this-world, is derived. The deity owns the life-soul (ndewa) and grants and reclaims breath. Because Marapu speech names the god only in couplets, the two halves of each name refer to one referent rather than two beings; nineteenth- and twentieth-century missionary translators (Wielenga, Onvlee) accordingly adopted these couplets to render the Christian God. Below the Creator, worship centres on the marapu, the deified ancestral dead who mediate between humankind and the sky.

Domains

• creation
• cosmic order
• sky

Powers

• plaits human beings into existence
• moulds human beings into existence
• apportions life, breath and destiny

Epithets

• Ina Bokulu, Ama Bokulu
• Mawulu Tau, Majii Tau

Sources

• Forth, G. (1981), Rindi: An Ethnographic Study of a Traditional Domain in Eastern Sumba (Verhandelingen KITLV 93), The Hague: Nijhoff, pp. 88-97.
• Onvlee, L. (1973), Cultuur als antwoord (Verhandelingen KITLV 66), The Hague: Nijhoff.
• Kapita, O.H. (1987), Lawiti Luluku Humba / Pola Peribahasa Sumba, Waingapu: Gereja Kristen Sumba.