Erinlẹ
deity in the Yoruba religion
In the Yoruba tradition, Erinlẹ was a great hunter who became an orisha.
He is said to have conducted the first Olobu of Ilobu to the site of the town of Ilobu, and to have protected the people of the town from Fulani invasions.
He is usually described as a hunter but sometimes as a herbalist or a farmer. It is said that one day he sank into the earth near Ilobu and became a river.
He is known all over Yorùbáland.
The cult of Erinlẹ is found in towns throughout the former Oyo Empire.
His shrines contain smooth, round stones from the Erinlẹ River.
The name may be derived from erin (elephant) and ilẹ (earth), or from erin and ile (house).
He is known as Inle by the Lukumi in Cuba and as Ode Inle, and sometimes as Oxossi Ibualamo in Brazilian Candomblé. The Erinlẹ River, a tributary of the Osun River, takes his name.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Erinlẹ” is deity in the Yoruba religion. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Erinlẹ, deity and Yoruba, not as a finished interpretation.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 23, 2023. The linked authority identifier is Q5591544.
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This entry incorporates text from “Erinlẹ” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.