Hnituo
Yi · deity · Yi traditional religion; continuing · deity
Hnituo is the celestial bride of the Nuosu Book of Origins, youngest daughter of the sky god Ngeti Gunzy. When the flood survivor Jjumu Vuvu ascends to the heavenly palace, she is given to him in marriage, and through her the divine and human realms are joined: their descendants become the ancestors of the Nuosu clans whose genealogies fill the latter half of the epic. The match is fraught, for the bride-wealth owed to her father and the couple's departure to earth set the gods and the earthlings at odds, and the children of the union are at first mute, gaining the gift of speech only when it is fetched down from the sky. Hnituo thus stands as the divine ancestress at the head of the human genealogies the bimo recite.
Parentage
Domains
- sky and heavens
- ancestry and progenitors
Powers
- to join the celestial and earthly houses through her marriage
Epithets
- Hnituo
Relations
- spouse: Jjumu Vuvu
Sources
- Bender, Mark, Aku Wuwu, and Jjivot Zopqu, trans. The Nuosu Book of Origins: A Creation Epic from Southwest China. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2019.
- Bamo Qubumo. "Traditional Nuosu Origin Narratives: A Case Study of Ritualized Epos in Bimo Incantation Scriptures." Oral Tradition 16, no. 2 (2001): 453-479.