I42. A rainbow is a pair of creatures.
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A rainbow is a pair of creatures, usually male and female, male and female.
Bushmen, Congo (wili, mukunyi), zela, luba, luba-kasai, luya, von, eve, hausa, zande, tiwi, aranda, anjamatana, garajari, nyol-nyol, keva, melpa, kuli, Maori, Palau, Chuck, Mizo, Shana, Marathi (or Gujarati), Semangs, Malays, Toraja, Flores, Ancient China, Komi, Navajo, Seri, Tarahumara, Totonaki, Kuna, Kogi, Ingano, Panare, Lokono, Mountain Exador (Pindilig), Mura, Kuchua ( Cusco), calapalo, guarani, ache, yagani.
SW Africa. The Bushmen [the upper yellow band of the rainbow is Bogomol (the main cultural hero), the lower red is Kwammang-a (he is the husband of Bogomol's adopted daughter; in one case, Bogomol calls him "my sister's son"] : Bleek, Lloyd 1923:66.
Bantu-speaking Africa. Congo (wili) [rainbow - six snakes (by number of colors, but also male and female snake]: Chaplin 1959:153; congo (mukunyi) [a snake lives in the water, it has two heads, male and female; when sky and earth are at odds, a snake arches in the air between them, it's a rainbow]: Jacobson-Widding 1991:184; zela [there are two rainbow snakes, a male and a female; the female is less visible, she is less dangerous; both come out of anthill]: Chaplin 1959:156; luba (shaba) [1) the rainbow is formed by two red snakes, a male and a female, joining in the sky to "catch fire" and stop the rain; 2) rainbow - smoke coming out of their mouths two snakes, red and black]: Studstill 1984:100; luba-kasai: Studstill 1984:80 [rainbow - snake, older brother, rain - younger sister], 101 [ancestors committed incest, including with a rainbow snake; for it was he who was thrown from the sky, and people lost their immortality]; luya [God created two rainbows to stop the rain; the man is narrow and one cannot stop the rain, for this purpose it must be followed wide female]: Millroth 1965:31 (=Parrinder 1967:76, =Wagner 1955:29; =Scheub 2000 [this text is classified as wugus]: 260).
West Africa. Background [red in the rainbow is male snake, blue is female]: Chaplin 1959:153; Parrinder 1967:76; eve [rainbow is a huge snake, or rather its soul; sometimes it is a pair of creatures - a serpent and his spouse]: Spieth 1906:552-553; Hausa: Fletcher 1912 [rainbow spirit - Gajimare; the red part of the spectrum is masculine, the rest is female; lives in rivers, in springs in the form of a snake, he must be left in a vessel of water in the house; rises from an anthill like the wind; the Hottentots think the same way]: 94; Greenberg 1946 [Gajimari is a rainbow snake; in the form of a snake lives in anthills and wells; stops the rain, rising in the sky to drink rainwater; after the rain ends, he turns into a rainbow in the sky; he himself is a red stripe, his wife and thunder deity Ra is blue]: 40-41; Tremearne 1913 [Gajjimare, rainbow - serpentine god of rain and thunderstorm; two-sex, red stripe - man, blue - woman; lives in storm clouds and in any body of water; other words for the rainbow are "water drinker" and "spider bow"]: 112.
Sudan - East Africa. Zande [the rainbow is a serpent that God made different from other snakes; rather, it is a pair of snakes; the one closer to the ground is a female and above it is a male; if the rainbow comes to a village, people run away from it, and she takes the rest; lives in termite mounds; a person cannot kill her; if you kill her, the water will flood the whole earth; if you see the corpse of the rainbow, it has serious consequences, the parents of the seeker will die at the same time year; the rainbow doesn't bite people, it sucks and burns]: Lagae 1920:147-149.
(Wed. Western Europe. The Alsatians [if a double rainbow appears, they say that God made the bright one, and the pale feature that imitated it; that's why it's Teufelsregenbogen]: Merian 1914 in Bähr 1931:408-409).
Australia. Tiwi [giant iridescent colored Maratjis lizards with horns on their heads and a beard on their lower jaw live in water bodies; if anyone comes up, there is a rumble and gurgling, they send a stream of water to the sky, it rains; one of them then turns into a rainbow, trying to harm that person or anyone else; they belong to the same Fresh Water totem as Thunderstorms, Monsoon Rain and Lightning; The rainbow is made up of two creatures: a male imunka spirit and a female Maratji]: Mountford 1958:155-156; aranda [the rainbow man lives underground; when it gets too wet, he gets up showing his the painted body; the upper arch is his mother-in-law; if you can see it in the east, it will stop raining, if it starts in the west]: Waterman 1987, No. 365 (1): 36; anjamatana [the middle band of the rainbow is male, by there are two women on his sides; each gave birth to one of the fratries]: Waterman 1987, No. 365 (2): 36; garajari [Walong, the wife of the rainbow, is below, her husband Walong is lying face up; well, Different than humans, they conceive children]: Worms 1943:293 in Roheim 1945:264; nyol-nyol [a rainbow serpent lies face up on its wife (bottom of the rainbow); called a "double serpent"]: Waterman 1987, no. 355:36.
Melanesia. Keva [Nemera meets two ugly snotty girls; has difficulty believing that the rich garden and the house belongs to them; she meets two beauties at the dance, wants to take them both; they suddenly go away; N. asks little man Moylom to follow the girls; he sees them take off their skin, become beautiful; throws their skin into the river; N. comes, lies down with both, between them ; the rainbow now has red color on both edges (the paint on the girls' bodies) and the color is dark in the middle (N.); we could take our skin off and rejuvenate if those girls' skin hadn't been thrown into the river]: LeRoy 1985, No. 65:198-200; melpa [the rainbow is the reflection in the sky of a giant snake lying in the forest; if there are two rainbows, it is male and female: the female is below and the male is on it]: Vicedom 1977, No. 7:8; coolie (Western Highlands) [giant snakes live in the Jimmi River area; the male is red, the female is yellow, the son is green, the daughter is blue; when it rains, the whole family goes out to see people; people dig a hole on the edge of the garden, it's filled with water and that's where these snakes sleep]: Aufenanger 1948:148.
Micronesia-Polynesia. Maori: Beckwith 1970 [when the double rainbow, the lower one is a woman, the upper one is a Turehu hairy man]: 325; Best 1972 [Anuanuanua is the common designation for the rainbow in Polynesia; for Maori Also Kahukura; the dark upper arch is male, the lower light arch is female; their children are tornadoes]: 71-72; Palau [clearly visible rainbow is female, weakly visible is male]: Sandra Chung in Blust 2019:178.
Tibet is the Northeast of India. Chuck [there was no water anywhere; brother and sister asked the blacksmith for a drink; he gave it on the condition that they would be husband and wife; they got drunk, died soon; when there were two rainbows in the sky, it was them; bright - sister, dim brother]: Elwin 1944:371; 1949:10; miso (lushy) [chhimb âl nupa 'rainbow and its reflection; double rainbow', dosl. 'rainbow-wife and rainbow-husband'; the rainbow itself is hmeichhia (wife) and its reflection is mipa (husband); the term chhimb âl ţhiang has the same meaning]: Lorrain 1940:79.
Burma - Indochina. Shana: Milne 1910:206-207 [rainbow is a snake or crocodile going down to the ground for a drink; if there is a second rainbow, it is the wife first], 266-267 [the predictor promised dry weather and watered the terrible weather rain; the king is angry; the fortuneteller promises to kill the crocodile that sent rain; he comes to the king, asks him to be saved; but the spirit of the fortuneteller came out of his body, killed the crocodile; the crocodile spirit accuses the king before the lords of the afterlife, they believe that the bloodstream is right; Sakya does not want to condemn the king and, in order to propitiate the bloodstream, turns him into a rainbow; the crocodile rainbow descends to earth to drink water, sometimes with him, his wife is the second rainbow.]
South Asia. Marathi or Gujarati (Bombay area) [Rama and Lakshmi - big and small rainbows]: Enthoven 1924:74
Malaysia-Indonesia. Semangs (Kintak Bong, Menig Kaien) [rainbow - two Huyak snakes crawling to drink water; they were brothers Tak Tahi (elder) and Tak Suyak; TS turned the sun to rise in the east, not on west, as before; TT was stupid, became a striped squirrel; both brothers entered the ground becoming a rainbow; TS went deeper, in the rainbow he was lower than his brother]: Evans 1937:167-168; Malays [double rainbow - palangi sa- k-lamin; (etymology in Blust 2019:178 - se- prefixes "one", kelamin = "married couple"]: Skeat, Blagden 1900:15, approx. 28; Western Toraja [if two rainbows are visible, the larger one is male, the smaller is woman]: Kruyt 1938:349, note 2; Flores: Bader 1971:948 [in central Flores, the rainbow is called Nitu Niba, sometimes Nitu being a man and Niba his wife], 950 [a rainbow is a snake with heads on both ends; or two snakes - green and red].
China - Korea. Ancient China: Riftin 1980 [rainbow is a dragon with heads at both ends; there was a division into rainbow-hung, a male dragon (predominantly light-colored) and a rainbow-ni, a female dragon (with the predominance of dark tones)]: 654; Blust 2019 [many sources since Han time; one rainbow arc is male, the other is female]: 178.
Volga - Perm. Komi-Zyrians: Nalimov 1903 [rainbow - oshka-moska, "cow with a bull" (from a better world above us)]: 83; Potanin 1883 [öshka-möshka - "bull with cow"]: 943.
The Great Southwest. Navajo [Rainbow People are usually portrayed as couples]: Bahti 2000:53; series [The young giant orphan has 7 wives; when the catastrophe happened and everything changed in the world, they became a rainbow; wives - different colors, their husband is upstairs]: Moser, Marlett s.a.
NW Mexico. Tarahumara [The rainbow comes to us from evil underground inhabitants; when drinking blood, the victim feels no pain; smells worse than a skunk; double rainbow - male on top, female below; woman fat and fair-skinned; if a man copulates with her in his sleep, he won't have children]: Bennett, Zingg 1935:325; (cf. Olmos Aguilara 2005 [The rainbow meets women and they become infertile; he steals children, he doesn't have his own; the red color of the rainbow is a kidnapped child]: 266-267).
Mesoamerica Mountain Totonaki [the rainbow is a water snake; consists of two - a large one (male) and a skinny one (female); dangerous for those approaching the water, especially for children]: Ichon 1969:137.
Honduras - Panama. Kuna [bright arc is male, pale arc is female]: Nordenskiöld 1938:394.
The Northern Andes. Kogi [there are two rainbows, male and female, and they vary in size]: Reichel-Dolmatoff 1985 (1): 237; ingano [double rainbow - male and female]: S.H. Levinsoh in Blust 2019:178.
Southern Venezuela. Panare [rainbow - male and female creatures]: Dumont 1976:126
Guiana. Lokono [rainbow is yawale-kuya good spirit; upper arch is female, lower arch is male]: Goeje 1943:46.
Ecuador. Pindilig (mountainous Ecuador) [the rainbow consists of a woman (white) and a man (red); they are spouses or sister and brother; brother and sister lie to mothers as if they are working in the fields; when the deception is revealed, they turn into a rainbow without being found]: Bernal in Turbay Ceballos 1998:16.
Central Amazon. Moore [married woman ten months pregnant, unable to walk; her two snake sons speak from her womb, carry her to a tree, crawl out of her womb, crawl on a tree, shed fruit, come back into her bosom, carried back; her husband watches snakes, kills by a tree; they rise to the sky, turn into a rainbow; two brothers are blue and red stripes separated by yellow]: Tastevin 1923, No. 4:531-532 .
The Central Andes. Quechua Southern Peru (Misminai (dep. Cusco) [rainbows are male and female, or a combination of both; one type of rainbow is called urkuchinantin, a word that implies androgyne qualities (something that includes male and female, or a woman with a male child); the female part of this rainbow is red, the male part is blue]: Urton 1981:89.
Southern Amazon. Kalapalo [the woman and her husband send her younger brother to get honey from the tree; they leave, leaving it on the tree; a tree frog saves the young man, brings him to his house, gives two pieces of uruku paint; You should keep the dry one for yourself, give the fresh one to your sister and her husband; when they rub it, they turn into a rainbow and its reflection]: Basso 1973:95-96.
Southern Brazil. Guarani (all bands) [a rainbow has two snakes]: Cadogán 1968:79; ache: Cadogán 1968a [the rainbow consists of two huge snakes]: 79; 1968b [the red edge of the rainbow is Membó Ruchú," big snake", blue edge - Kirijú Braá, boa constrictor, boa consrictor]: 92, 119.
The Southern Cone. The Yagans [Akáinix, Brother of the Sun (Lem), painted himself more beautiful than anyone else; at this time, women were in power and sisters A. trained in kina's sacred hut to pretend as if they are dead; they did not succeed, A. came up, showed how to freeze while holding his breath; when he returned home, A. pretends to be dead; other men sleep with his sisters and wife, but the imaginary dead man is still sees; when men go hunting cormorants, he gets up, scares off birds, kills men with a sling; their relatives attacked A., but failed to break, but only bent him and his son, who came to help to his father; A. is the rainbow, his son is the second, smaller rainbow, sometimes visible with the first; the attackers got dirty with the paint with which A. painted himself, since then on the feathers of these birds (which ones are not specified ) red spots]: Wilbert 1977, No. 4:21-24.