The Black-Winged Flying Fish

The Black-Winged Flying Fish, mavaeng so panid, is the lord and eldest of the flying fish and the divine founder of the Tao flying-fish cult. In the central Tao ritual myth the great fish appears, commonly in a dream, to an ancestor who had been cooking and eating the fish improperly and had fallen sick, and summons him to the shore. There the fish reveals the correct order of the sea: which fishes are true fish fit to eat, which are reserved for men, for women, or for elders, which are forbidden, and the seasons, taboos, and rites by which flying fish must be summoned, caught by torchlight, dried, and consumed. This revelation establishes the rayon, the flying-fish season that structures the Tao ceremonial year, together with its summoning rites and the elaborate classification of marine life. The Black-Winged Flying Fish is thus the archetypal animal-lord whose covenant with the ancestors underlies Tao subsistence and law.

Domains

• sea and fishing
• ritual law and taboo

Powers

• ordain the classification of the fishes
• institute the flying-fish season and its rites

Epithets

• mavaeng so panid — the black-winged oneSyaman Rapongan (1997), Cold Sea, Deep Feeling, Taipei: Lianhe wenxue. (secondary)

Sources

• The Black-Winged Flying Fish, chief of the flying fish, appeared to a Tao ancestor and revealed the correct handling, classification, taboos, and seasonal rites of the flying fish.: Syaman Rapongan (1997), Cold Sea, Deep Feeling, Taipei: Lianhe wenxue. (secondary); Kano & Segawa (1956), An Illustrated Ethnography of Formosan Aborigines, Vol. I: The Yami. (secondary)
• The revelation established the rayon, the flying-fish season structuring the Tao ceremonial year.: Benedek, Dezso (1991), The Songs of the Ancestors, Taipei: SMC Publishing. (secondary)