Murupiangkala, the second Sun-woman

Tiwi · deity · Tiwi traditional religion; continuing · Recorded classification

Murupiangkala is the second Sun-woman of Tiwi tradition, the third of the three children whom the creator Mudungkala carried up out of the earth, and sister to both the elder Sun-woman Wuriupranala and the culture hero Purukupali. In the tradition of Bathurst and Melville Islands recorded by Mountford, the Tiwi reckon two sister Suns rather than one, Wuriupranala and Murupiangkala, an account later analysed by astronomers as a memory of the changing path of the sun through the year or of parhelia, the optical 'sun-dogs' that can place more than one sun in the sky at once. Her name recalls Murupianga, the place in the south-east of Melville Island where her mother first emerged.

Parentage

Domains

Powers

Epithets

Relations

Sources

Open in the interactive app →