Donyi-Polo Dere Yonkuk

Donyi-Polo Dere Yonkuk

Sky and sun, and the ancestor-shrine of a lineage

Donyi-Polo is the indigenous religion of the Adi people (historically called Abor) and of neighbouring communities of Arunachal Pradesh, in particular the Siang valley. The name is a pair of complementary realities rather than a single god: Donyi, the sky or spirit world above, and Polo, the sun-world of earth, moon, water and living beings below, with the standing rule that the two are never to be confused or merged in ritual. Between them stand the Dongfine and other spirit powers of the hills, rivers and cultivated land, and the doxeyome (lair, the dwelling of a spirit), and a household cult centred on a yong — an ancestral shrine holding the sacred objects of a family line.

A Yonkuk is a descent line: the cluster of households descended from a common ancestor, keeping the ancestor's yong, and standing together under that ancestor's name. Above the individual yong stands the yonyak or the village lodu — the community prayer house in which the line's collective observances are performed. The best-known of these observances is the Nyokum Yong sequence of the monsoon, led by the nyokum, whose office is hereditary; the nyokum is also the eagle that carries news between the world of the living and the world of the spirits, which is why the eagle appears on the Adi flag and why the leader's name is the eagle's name. Seasonality governs the calendar: agricultural work, the rains, the death of a leader and the building of a new yong each mark it.

This entry is also a record of change. Donyi-Polo has been systematised in the twentieth century: Adi cultural associations, church-linked or reformist accounts, and the comparative religion of the 1970s onward have all written the tradition into a single, tidy shape that local practitioners do not always recognise. The corpus frontmatter's "institutionalisation in the 1960s–1990s" is a fair description of that process, but a description of it, not a chronology of the religion. An Adi contributor must check this entry against village practice, particularly for the yong institutions and for the rites this description does not mention.

Sources and what is still unverified

• Donyi-Polo ritual and oral literature, in Adi and in English translation — exists in the community and in a small number of published collections; none is on file here.
• The Abotani ethnography of the Siang valley; a specific monograph must be supplied.
• East Siang District Gazetteer (Government of India gazetteer series) — to be checked.
• A named Adi guardian is required. This entry should not be published as verified without one, and no Adi-language source has been consulted for it.