Pong Lalondong, 'the lord who is a cock', is the god of death of the Sa'dan Toraja and the master of Puya, the land of the souls, which lies in the south-west beneath the earth's surface. In the death chants (badong) collected by H. van der Veen, the soul of the deceased travels the perilous road to Puya, where the much-feared Pong Lalondong stands guard over the way and sits in judgment over the dead; a chant places in his mouth the declaration that he enters the Land of the Souls to cut short the lives of those whose span is at its end. A soul that passes his judgment may climb the mountain toward the upper world to be numbered among the deified ancestors who watch over their descendants. His cock nature accords with the divinatory and juridical associations of the cock and the cockfight in Toraja custom, and his splendid plumage is connected with his office as judge.