When the Tsuwo ancestors were dispersed, a great flood came, and everyone was forced to flee to the top of Mount Niitaka-yama.
In their haste, none had brought fire with them, and the people suffered cold.
Someone saw a sparkle on the top of a neighboring mountain and asked who would go to bring fire back.
A goat volunteered, swam to the other mountain, and brought back a burning cord between its horns, but it tired from the swim, and it drooped its head and extinguished the fire before it made it back to land.
The people next sent out a taoron (?), which succeeded in the quest; the people gathered around the animal and patted it, which is why it has such shiny skin and small body today.
The people were unsure how to lower the water.
A wild pig offered to swim off and break a bank lower in the river, and it asked the people to care for its children if it drowned.
The people agreed, the pig swam off, and soon the flood water sank.
The people decided to make a new river, with the help of the animals, to prevent another great flood.
A snake guided the people and hollowed out the bed of the stream.
Thousands of birds paved the channel with pebbles.
Other animals worked to fashion the riverbanks and valleys.
Only the eagle didn't help, and in punishment, it is not allowed to drink from the river.
The goddess Hipararasa came from the south and formed plains by crushing the mountains.
At the central ranges, though, an angry bear protecting its homeland confronted her and bit and wounded her child, so the goddess desisted.
The land hardened, so the mountains still stand today.
The survivors from Mount Niitaka-yama, in groups, wandered their various ways.
The idea of headhunting originated while they lived on that mountain.
[Frazer, pp. 229-232]
Frazer, Sir James G. Folk-Lore in the Old Testament, vol. 1, Macmillan & Co., London, 1919.
A heavy rain fell for many days, and a giant snake lay across the river, blocking it so that the whole land flooded.
Many people drowned, and the few survivors fled to the highest mountain, but they still feared as the waters kept rising.
A crab appeared and cut through the body of the snake, and the flood subsided.
[Frazer, p. 232]
A giant crab caught and tried to eat a large snake, but the snake managed to escape into the ocean.
Immediately a great flood covered the world.
The ancestors of the Bunun escaped to Mount Usabeya (Niitaka-yama) and Mount Shinkan, where they lived by hunting until the waters receded.
They returned to find their fields washed away, but a stalk of millet remained.
They planted its seeds and subsisted on its produce.
Before the flood, the land had been quite flat; many mountains and valleys were formed by it.
[Frazer, pp. 232-233]
Ami (eastern Taiwan):
The god Kakumodan Sappatorroku and the goddess Budaihabu descended to a place called Taurayan with the boy Sura, the girl Nakao, a pig and a chicken.
One day, two other gods, Kabitt and Aka, while hunting nearby, saw the pig and chicken and coveted them.
They asked Kakumodan for them, but as they had nothing to trade, they were refused.
This angered them, and they plotted to kill Kakumodan.
They called upon the four sea gods,
Mahahan
Mariyaru
Marimokoshi
and Kosomatora, who consented to help.
They told Kabitt and Aka that in five days, when the moon was full, the sea will make a booming sound, and they should escape to a mountain where there are stars.
On the fifth day, the two gods fled to a mountain, and when they reached the summit, the sea began booming and rising.
Kakumodan's house was flooded, but he and his wife escaped by climbing a ladder to the sky.
In their haste, though, they forgot the children, and upon reaching safety, they futilely called for them.
Sura and Nakao, however, had climbed into a wooden mortar and had floated to safety to the Ragasan mountain.
The brother and sister, now alone in the world, feared to offend the ancestral gods, but of necessity they became man and wife.
To mitigate the wrath of the gods, they contacted each other as little as possible and interposed a mat between them in their bed.
They had three sons and two daughters.
During Nakao's first pregnancy, the first grain of millet was found in her ear, and in time the two learned the proper ritual for cultivating that grain.
[Frazer, pp. 226-227]
In an earthquake, mountains tumbled down, the earth gaped, and hot subterranean waters gushed out and flooded the whole earth.
Two sisters and a brother escaped in a wooden mortar and floated south to Rarauran.
They landed and climbed Mount Kaburugan to view the countryside; then the sisters searched south, and the brother searched west for good land.
Finding none, they returned and ascended to the mountain's summit again.
But the older sister tired halfway up, and when the other two returned for her, they found she had turned into a rock.
The brother and sister wanted to return to their homeland, but the mortar was rotten and no longer sea-worthy.
Wandering away on foot, they saw smoke in the distance and, fearing another eruption and flood, hastened away.
But the sister collapsed in exhaustion, and they had to remain.
Catastrophe ceased to threaten, and they decided to settle there.
They were uncertain whether it would be proper for them to marry, so they asked the sun as it rose the next morning.
The sun answered immediately that they may marry.
A few months later, the wife conceived, but she delivered only two abortions.
They threw these in the river.
One went straight down and became the ancestor of fish, and the other swam across and gave rise to crabs.
Next morning, the brother asked the moon why their offspring should be fish and crabs.
The moon answered that marriage between brother and sister is strictly prohibited, but as they can find no other mates, they must place a mat between them in their marriage bed.
They heeded this advice, and the wife soon gave birth to a stone.
They were again distraught and were about to throw the stone in the river, but the moon told them they must care for it, nevertheless.
Later, they settled in a rich land called Arapanai, and in time the brother died.
Pitying the woman's loneliness, the moon told her that she would soon have companions.
Just five days later, the stone swelled up and four children came from it, some shod and some barefoot.
Those with shoes were probably the ancestors of the Chinese.
[Frazer, pp. 227-229]
A brother and sister escaped a great deluge in a wooden mortar.
They landed on a high mountain, married, had children, and founded the village of Popkok in a hollow of the hills, where they thought themselves safe from another deluge.
[Gaster, p. 104]
Gaster, Theodor H. Myth, Legend, and Custom in the Old Testament, Harper & Row, New York, 1969. (Most of the flood stories in this work are taken from Frazer, 1919.)
