Abotani (primeval ancestor of the Tani peoples)

Abotani, 'Father Tani,' is the primeval ancestor of the Tani-speaking peoples of central Arunachal Pradesh, whose very name as an ethnic group means 'the children of Abotani.' In the Padam-Minyong cosmogony he is the youngest and weakest child of the mother-goddess Pedong Nane, yet he becomes the first true human and the founder of settled life, above all of rice agriculture. The vast Apatani and Adi oral corpus casts him as a trickster who survives and prospers among predatory spirits through cleverness rather than strength, most famously in his lifelong feud with his brother the Epom. He is venerated as forefather rather than as a god, and his exploits are recited by ritual specialists (miri / nyibu) and dramatized in the agricultural festival cycle.

Parentage

• Pedong Nane (primordial mother-goddess)

Domains

• human ancestry and descent
• rice cultivation

Powers

• to establish the cultivation of rice for humankind
• to outwit hostile spirits and rivals through cunning

Epithets

• Abo Tani

Relations

• sibling: Epom (the Jungle Lord)
• enemy: Epom (the Jungle Lord)
• ally: Doying Bote (god of wisdom and knowledge)

Sources

• Stuart Blackburn, Himalayan Tribal Tales: Oral Tradition and Culture in the Apatani Valley (Leiden: Brill, 2008).
• Tai Nyori, History and Culture of the Adis (New Delhi: Omsons Publications, 1993).