The History and Significance of the goddess Jata

Jata, according to the mythology and folklore of the Dayak people of Borneo, was an important goddess. Along with the sky god, Mahatala, Jata as the earth goddess, was responsible for creating the world. In the first epoch of creation, the sky, the mountains, the cliffs, the clouds, then sun and the moon came into being and then Jata fashioned the lands and hills during the second period of creation.

After creating all these wondrous items, Jata and Mahatala set about creating a world for man to live on. Mahatala created the Tree of Life, which had gold leaves and ivory fruit. Jata manifested herself as a female hornbill and Mahatala as a male. “She saw the Tree in the distance, flew to it and began to eat its fruit and buds. The male bird also flew to it and began to eat the moss on it, but when he saw that the female was eating the fruit he was overcome with envy. A fight broke out between them. The male hornbill broke off the buds and fruit and they changed into a gold boat. The knots were cut off by the female bird, and from them issued a young woman. She got into the gold boat and floated on the primeval ocean. The strife between the birds, that is to say between Mahatala and Jata, continued, and from bits of the Tree the rivers and lakes of the Upperworld were formed”.

It is believed that Jata dwells in the Underworld (or in the primeval waters), which is located under man’s earth. The entrance to her domain is located near villages at the deep junctions of streams, and the village of the goddess is on the Underworld river. “But in the Creation Myth the homes of the two deities are not considered as geographically separate: they are both placed in the Upperworld, one on a Jewel Mountain, the other on a Gold Mountain. They are there considered more as one deity than as a duality”.

Jata is seen as bad and the destroyer; in this, Mahatala is her counterpart who is good and the creator. Mahatala's emblem is a lance, Jata's is a cloth. Between the two deities, the sky god Mahatala reigns supreme.

Scholars have suggested that Jata’s role in the creation myth was important but subsidiary, and she has been said to be the sister or wife of Mahatala.

Bibliography:

Wales, H. G. Quaritch (1959) The Cosmological Aspect of Indonesian Religion, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland.