Doni-Polo

Doni-Polo — Donyi the Sun and Polo the Moon — names the supreme divine pair of the Tani peoples of Arunachal Pradesh and neighbouring Assam: the Adi, Nyishi, Apatani, Galo, Tagin and Mising. Donyi, the Sun, is addressed as Mother, and Polo, the Moon, as Father; together they are conceived not as two rival powers but as a single complementary unit, the highest visible expression of the divine.

The tradition

In the understanding of several Tani groups, the Sun and Moon are the visible face of a formless supreme principle — named Sedi among some of the Adi and Jimi among the Galo — which withdrew after creation, leaving Donyi and Polo as its enduring witnesses. Doni-Polo is accordingly as much an ethical idea as a pair of deities: the Sun and Moon see all, and truthfulness is spoken of as living in their sight. The peoples of the tradition trace their descent from the primal ancestor Abo Tani, and to call oneself a child of Donyi-Polo is to claim membership in that shared Tani world.

The modern movement

From the late 1960s, Adi cultural leaders led by Talom Rukbo worked to give the tradition institutional form, partly in response to the spread of Christianity in the region. The resulting Donyi-Polo movement organised congregational worship, with purpose-built prayer halls — known among the Adi as gangging — set forms of prayer, and its own religious emblems. Alongside this organised expression, the older, uninstitutional sense of Doni-Polo persists in everyday speech and ethics across the Tani communities, whatever an individual's formal religion.