Djulighana's Role

A blessing be shouted from the high peak of Divadaban to the old watchman Djulighana, who gives us all ideas and guides us with his wisdom - Tunga asmaliki do. So begin the story.

"Babada-malaka-muni-fraqiqi-howa-nashasha-pa-mo-morio - Uhff!" Down came the great gnashing teeth of the World Snake around him, smacking him right over the head with a great kursnap! and Djulighana the God of Has Seen Everything was interrupted in his joyful-morning-dance.

Ahh! Quick! Walkabout! And with a jump to his left and a step to his right he was safe again on his joyful-morning-dance.

"Babada-mulumu-mani-banito-shraladha-balu - Uhff!" What was it this time that had smacked him in the head? He looked around and saw Sep the Snakewise sitting under a big shady grapefruit tree, with a ripe and juicy grape fruit clenched in his fist. "Uhfff!" - he threw that one too. Sep pointed and laughed at him, but Djulighana did not mind and laughed as well, and out of his open mouth fled the idea for candle wicks.

Sep stood up and walked over to him, giggling as he went. "Hey Djuli!" he said, joyful as ever, "have I got something to show you!" and he gestured in a direction that had only just been created.

"But Sep," wise old Djulighana intoned politely, "your ideas are always all snake wise and silly, and so impossible for me to follow in their strangeness." He scratched his head nervously, and out of his ear climbed the idea for ice cream.

Sep refused to take no for an answer as always and dragged the poor mbazha over beyond the grapefruit tree and even further past the tomato patch that had not been around before and when they finally stopped Djulighana saw the most worrying idea he had ever seen, and as they say he had seen everything. There before him was a great number of spirits of all varieties gathering the dead snake skins of Satakal and rolling them into a single enormous ball. Around and around they rolled the ball, and it grew larger and larger. When he first saw it, it was as large as Morwha's delicious rump, but within moments it was easily the size of a hut.

"Come on," said Sep, "We're making a new home out of old snake skins, so we don't have to jump about all the time, dodging teeth all left and right! It'll be much happier, and life will be so easy without all those distractions. Come help us, Djuli!" and with that Sep jumped onto the ball and started pushing just like the others, and by this time it was the size of a small hillock.

He stared in awe for a moment, his jaw hung almost to the ground, during which time the idea of a duck took flight from his throat. Finally he regained his composure and admonished his friend with a questioning stare and a "What does Tall Papa think of all this?"

But Sep was spared the embarrassment of answering because suddenly a loud cry came up from the ball - now even as big as a whole village - and it quickly became clear that it had gotten out of control. Onward it rolled, passing over farmlands and forests and small lakes, picking up all of them as it went, and bursting great holes in many dozens of world scales, to the great distress of their inhabitants. Djulighana sighed and began to chase after it, gathering the detritus that fell from the ball's enormous mass as he went.

He quickly became burdened with the many old skins that had fallen off, which were far too numerous and heavy for him to carry on his own. He had an idea though, as always, and as he ran through a hole the snake-skin-ball had made in a quiet forest village, he grabbed the hole itself and took it with him - and several others as he passed through them - until he had enough to form the shape of a spirit to help him. And so he made the spirit which took the name Sheogog, but it was Djulighana's great misfortune that Sheogog was not really a spirit, but a hole where spirits should have been, and could not concentrate on the task at hand contorted as he was to look like something he was not. Within moments he scattered his skins to the winds, shouted out some nonsense words, and leaped off to who knows where, for Sheogog was truly mad.

Djulighana sighed but was not surprised, this always happened to him. As he did so, an idea fell out of his nose and landed on the ground dead, for it was far too silly to live very long at all. He then decided to build a second helper, one who would not be so crazy as Sheogog, for he would assemble him to look like what he was, a pile of old snake skins, and not a spirit. This seemed to work well, and the spirit took the name Hermonga Mora and very sane and knowledgeable, because his bulk was made of the world itself. But he was disinterested in helping, as snake skins often are, and simply stopped to observe and think.

Clearly, nothing was working out too well for Djulighana, but fortunately for him he heard a loud thud and the ball (now as large as anything you could imagine and larger still) had stopped, because it had run into the edge of things. All the spirits looked back now, and saw that they were very far away from everything else, in the middle of a great sea of Nothing, and they were very afraid. At that point Paparuptga arrived, as you knew he would, and bopped Sep on the head for his foolishness and admonished all the spirits for listening to that snake wise little fool.

But then Paparuptga turned to Djulighana and asked him for a quick favor.

"Wise Djulighana - Who Has Seen Everything - son of my second cousin and the brother of three of my loveliest wives - these spirits have made a foolish decision and are trapped now on a ball of old snake skins, being so distant from their original homes, but I am a loving father and have instructed my sons and daughters to watch over them, and to help guide them to the Far Shores. Will you please attend to these fools and give them some of your ideas to help them find their way back?"

Djulighana would have much rather continued on his joyful-morning-dance, but at that moment he surveyed the mess around him and, contemplating the idea of love (which was not his own, of course), he agreed with a sigh to become a good watchman for the poor spirits below. And so we say, a blessing be shouted from the high peak of Divadaban and every other mountain to Djulighana, who gives us all ideas and guides us with his wisdom.

TUNGA ASMALIKI DO! 
We all seek your mighty counsel.