dema deity

dema deity, any of several mythical ancestral beings of the Marind-anim of southern New Guinea, the centre of a body of mythology called the dema deity complex. The decisive act in dema myths is the slaying of a dema (ancestral) deity by the ancestral tribe. This act brings about the transition from the ancestral world to the human one. In many ancient myths, the creation of humankind occurs after the creation of the cosmos. Humans and those attributes that are most decisively human—sexuality, the cultivation of food, and death—are viewed as a decisive break with the previous mode of existence, which was characterized by asexual reproduction, the spontaneous production of food, and immortality.

The rupture between the divine world and the ensuing human world may be brought about by theft of a divine property (e.g., the stealing of fire or grain by a culture hero), which, if viewed as an evil act, regards the human condition as punishment (the Fall complex). In other traditions, man is defined as a clever thief, and the human condition and culture is perceived as the seizing of an opportunity (the Prometheus or trickster complex). Another view is that the rupture between the divine-ancestral and the human worlds is associated with the slaying of an ancestor or an ancestral deity by the ancestors. The term for this structure is the dema deity complex.

The most widely quoted example of the dema deity complex is a version of the Ceramese myth of Hainuwele recorded by the German anthropologist Adolf E. Jensen. According to this myth, a dema man named Amenta found a coconut speared on a boar’s tusk and in a dream was instructed to plant it. In six days a palm had sprung from the nut and flowered. Amenta cut his finger, and his blood dripped on the blossom. Nine days later a girl grew asexually from the blossom, and in three more days she became sexually mature. Amenta named her Hainuwele, which means “coconut branch.” During a major religious festival, Hainuwele stood in the midst of the dance grounds and excreted valuable objects. After nine days of this activity, the dema men dug a hole in the middle of the dance ground, threw Hainuwele in, and danced the ground firm on top of her. Amenta dug up her corpse, dismembered it, and planted the pieces. These pieces gave birth to plant species previously unknown, especially tubers, which have since been the Ceramese’s chief food. Another dema goddess forced the dema men to go through a labyrinth. Some became ordinary mortals; others changed into animals and spirits.

Since its initial discovery in New Guinea, the dema complex has been found to be characteristic of the culture of many other tuber cultivators. The basic motif of death and dismemberment appears to reflect the fact that a tuber must be cut up and the pieces buried in order to propagate the species.