Japara- Aboriginal Australian GodDeity"Moon Man"
Also known as: Tapara
Description
The moon man who seduced Bima day after day, drawing her into the bush while her infant son Jinini lay in the shade. One scorching afternoon the child died in the sun. Japara offered to restore the boy within three days, but the grieving Purukupali refused, walked backwards into the sea with his dead son, and decreed death permanent for all. Wounded in their fight, Japara became the moon.
Mythology & Lore
The Death of Jinini
In the Dreamtime, Purukupali was one of the first Tiwi men on Bathurst and Melville Islands. His wife Bima went out each day to gather food, taking their infant son Jinini with her. In the same camp lived Japara, an unmarried man, and day after day he persuaded Bima to leave the child under the shade of a tree and go with him into the bush.
On one very hot day, Bima was away too long. Jinini, left in shade that shifted as the sun moved, lay exposed to the full heat and died. Purukupali's grief was immediate and total. He struck Bima on the head with a throwing stick and hounded her into the bush.
Japara, seeing the father's anguish, offered to take the dead child and restore him to life within three days, the same three days the moon itself disappears before returning. But Purukupali was beyond consolation. He declared that his son's death would not be undone, that death would come to the whole world and be permanent for all living things. The two men fought, and Japara was wounded. Purukupali then picked up the body of his son and walked backwards into the sea, sealing his decree with his own death. The place where he entered the water, on the east coast of Melville Island, became a whirlpool so strong that anyone who approached it in a canoe would drown.
The Moon and the Curlew
Japara, wounded and defeated, changed himself into the moon and rose into the sky. The marks of the injuries Purukupali inflicted are still visible on the moon's face. And though the moon alone among all things escapes the decree of permanent death, disappearing for three days each month and returning, even Japara must die those three days, reenacting the restoration he offered but Purukupali refused.
Bima did not escape either. She became Wayai, the curlew, the bird that still roams the bush at night wailing in remorse for the child she lost and the death she helped bring into the world. Her cry carries across the Tiwi islands after dark, a voice of grief that never finds consolation.
Relationships
- Family
- Enemy of