Among the Australians, the Munkan Onyauva is a place of deep lagoons where spirits live: Onya means “spirit”, and Auva means “totemic center”, where the ancestors of the Australian clans, half-humans, half-animals (swamp fish), come from. Lagoons were the embodiment of the forces of fertility, a place for fishing and puberty of girls, and are associated in myths with the mystery of childbirth. The larger lagoon was the place (auwa) of male spirits, the smaller - female. Spirits could meet on land between lagoons.
They say that once, at the time of the first creation, the swamp fish Ita was a woman and her lover - Pantya - took her to these places. But Ita's older brother, the banana bird, began to pursue the lovers. He overtook them and pierced Pantya with spears. Deprived of life, Pantya goes down into the auva, which has become the afterlife. But the wrath of the pursuer also fell on Ita. She too was killed, then descended into the underworld - a swampy lagoon - and turned into a fish.
One day, a certain hunter crept up and wounded one of the girls: he smeared her body with his sweat and blood, so that his prey could no longer return to another world - she became the hunter’s wife. But the water in which the woman-spirit lived remained in her body; My husband had to make an incision to let this water out. The woman, however, continued to yearn for her lagoon, and then the lovers decided to return there. Alas, the path to another world was inaccessible to living people - both of them fell dead on the outskirts of Onyauva.
In other myths, death occurred under less romantic circumstances. They say how once, in early times, a man and a woman took part in a hunt in the thickets of the lagoons.
The hunters set fire to the thickets, driving out their prey, and in the end they themselves fell into the flames. Then the man, whose name was Pino, realized that he was losing his life, and went down to Onyauva. So he became a spirit. This was the first death. The wife, as a sign of mourning, smeared the body with clay and began to mourn the deceased, predicting that she would follow him. Since then, women have been mourning the dead, and among most peoples of the world the mourners are women. The women of the clan to which the first mourner belonged descend into the waters of Onyauv after death. People should not drink this water or swim in it, otherwise the spirits of the underworld will stab them with their digging sticks.
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru