Mother of Tudava

In the Tudava cycle told at Laba'i on the northern shore of Kiriwina, all the inhabitants fled the man-eating ogre Dokonikan, abandoning one woman, Bolutukwa or Mitigis, who lived alone in a grotto by the beach. One night, as she slept, water dripping from the stalactites of the cave pierced her and she conceived. Her son was Tudava, the great culture-hero who later killed Dokonikan. Malinowski repeatedly used this fatherless conception as evidence of Trobriand beliefs about procreation, in which pregnancy is caused by spirit children rather than by fathers, and matrilineal descent alone determines kinship.

Domains

• motherhood

Powers

• to conceive a hero-child without a father

Relations

• mother of: Yam Culture-HeroBolutukwa bore the culture-hero Tudava in her grotto at Laba'i after being pierced by dripping water, and reared him alone after her kinsmen fled the ogre Dokonikan.Malinowski, Bronislaw. Myth in Primitive Psychology. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner, 1926. (secondary)

Sources

• Bolutukwa (also called Mitigis) is the mother of the culture-hero Tudava, a woman of Laba'i who conceived him virginally when water dripping from the stalactites of her grotto pierced her while she slept.: Malinowski, Bronislaw. Myth in Primitive Psychology. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner, 1926. (secondary); Strenski, Ivan (ed.). Malinowski and the Work of Myth. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992. (secondary)