Parinai'a
Xavante · deity · Xavante traditional religion; continuing · Recorded classification
The Parinai'a are the primordial creator dyad of Xavante cosmology, the pair of beings from whom the earth, the Xavante people and the first ordering of the world proceed. They are perceived in the present through the jabiru stork, and in dream-song performances men painted in charcoal and red urucum take on the stork's likeness so that the creators live again through the actions of the living. Sources treat the Parinai'a as one face of the wider immortal creator agency named romhõsi'wa and höimana'u'õ, and some narrators identify the creating power with the Sun.
Domains
- creation
- cosmos ordering
Powers
- shapes the primordial world
- incarnates as the jabiru stork
Epithets
- parinai'a — the ones who make / the creating pairWikinativa/Xavante (Wikiversidade) (secondary)
Relations
- ally: Romhõsi'waSources treat parinai'a and the romhõsi'wa as largely coextensive names for the creator agency.A. Shaker Eid, Os Senhores da Criação do Mundo Xavante: Romhõsi'wa (São Paulo, 2012) (secondary)
- ally: Höimana'u'õThe creator pair belong to the deathless höimana'u'õ.L. R. Graham, Performing Dreams (1995) (secondary)
- ally: BâdâSome tellings identify the creator with the Sun, 'our creator.'Wikinativa/Xavante (Wikiversidade) (secondary)
Sources
- In Xavante cosmology the world and the Xavante themselves were brought into being by a primordial pair of creator-entities called Parinai'a, who reveal themselves in the form of jabiru storks.: L. R. Graham, Performing Dreams: Discourses of Immortality Among the Xavante of Central Brazil (University of Texas Press, 1995) (secondary); Wikinativa/Xavante (Wikiversidade), Xavante cosmology (secondary)