{"id":"AFR-002","label":"Kwanyama edila circumcision Big Birds","people_or_site":"Kwanyama / Owambo","country_current":"Namibia / Angola","historic_region":"Uukwanyama / Kwanyama region","macroregion":"Africa","local_name":"edila / odila; omazila / omadhila; osinghuma (royal mourning)","source_term":"edila; bullroarer","source_language":"English","object_description":"Bird-masked circumcision officiants sound bullroarers during boys' cutting and possession by the Big Bird.","function_summary":"Kwanyama circumcision is described as a secret rite in which boys are eaten by a Big Bird, women of fertile age are banished, and Bird-men sound bullroarers during the cutting.","attestation_type":"ethnographic_attestation","source_key":"loeb_feudal_africa","source_type":"primary_ethnography","source_url":"https://helda.helsinki.fi/handle/10138/23512","page_or_plate":"Loeb 1948, African Studies 7(1), pp. 26-27; Loeb 1962 pp. 236-239 via Salokoski 2006 pp. 252-254","map_confidence":"medium","plot_status":"plot_with_caveat","coordinate_basis":"representative coordinate for named people/region; source does not warrant a ritual-site point","jade_complex_role":"","blurb":"In the Uukwanyama circumcision rite of the Owambo, the boys were eaten by a Big Bird and then defecated from its anus. The men who staged this wore bird masks and were called the \"spirits\" or the \"Gods\" of circumcision; \"eaten by\" was the ordinary Owambo metaphor for spirit possession, so to be swallowed was to die ritually and be possessed by the Bird. The anthropologist Edwin Loeb, who recorded the rite, described it as a secret performance from which women of fertile age were banished altogether and at which the boys observed silence and taboos on food and drink. As each boy was cut, the masked Bird-men sounded their bullroarers to drown his cries and held him down so he would not struggle free; afterward each boy broke loose and ran, and the birds chased him with switches, making an outcry as if driving cattle. The next day a sheep was killed and its hide cut into belts to give the boys supernatural protection. The same Big Birds went in procession across the country before the sowing season, as in the neighbouring Uukwaluudhi king's rain rite, sounding a bullroarer whirled at the end of a strong rope, sounded alongside an instrument made from the tip of an antelope horn. The boys sang of the bird that had eaten them. A boy who died under the knife had simply stayed in the monster's stomach; he was buried secretly in the bush, and his mother, when his food basket came back unemptied, knew, and dared not mourn openly. The same instrument had one further office. In olden times it was sounded for the death of a circumcised king — osinghuma — played on the fourth day of mourning by a man standing inside a crowd of initiated men so that the uninitiated could not see it, \"to show that there no longer was a king, and that the mourning was no ordinary mourning.\"","pull_quote":"It threw me up, and when I came down I fell into its mouth. Then I came out of its anus.","pull_quote_translation":"","pull_quote_cite":"Loeb 1948, 'Transition Rites of the Kuanyama Ambo,' African Studies 7(1), p. 27 (the boys' song about the edila)","term_gloss":"Owambo names for the \"Big Birds\" of the rite: edila / odila (\"birds\"; the singular odila also glossed as eagle, duck, epilepsy, and airplane), and the circumcision forms omazila / omadhila (sing. eedhila, eethila). Loeb 1948 gives the instrument as edila and names its royal use osinghuma, the roarer sounded for the death of a circumcised king.","cls":"restricted","class_label":"Restricted","color":"#A43C2F","is_candidate":false,"flags":["spirit_voice","initiation","death_rebirth","women_taboo","agriculture"],"f_jade_complex":false,"f_women_taboo":true,"f_women_special":false,"f_snake":false,"etymology":"Kwanyama plural noun meaning \"birds.\" Loeb states the bullroarers are called edila, the same name given to the masked men whose voices they represent, coding the instrument as the voice of the Big Bird spirits.","literal_gloss":"birds (plural)","semantic_cluster":"bird / spirit_voice","etymology_confidence":"high","sources":[{"citation":"Edwin M. Loeb, 'Transition Rites of the Kuanyama Ambo (A Preliminary Study), Part I,' African Studies 7(1) (1948), pp. 26-27; Loeb 1962, pp. 236-239, as quoted in Märit Salokoski, How Kings Are Made – How Kingship Changes (University of Helsinki, 2006), pp. 252-254","url":"https://helda.helsinki.fi/handle/10138/23512","archive":"https://web.archive.org/web/20260216103545/https://helda.helsinki.fi/handle/10138/23512"}],"source_citations":"Edwin M. Loeb, 'Transition Rites of the Kuanyama Ambo (A Preliminary Study), Part I,' African Studies 7(1) (1948), pp. 26-27; Loeb 1962, pp. 236-239, as quoted in Märit Salokoski, How Kings Are Made – How Kingship Changes (University of Helsinki, 2006), pp. 252-254","source_display":"Edwin M. Loeb, 'Transition Rites of the Kuanyama Ambo (A Preliminary Study), Part I,' African Studies 7(1) (1948), pp. 26-27; Loeb 1962, pp. 236-239, as quoted in Märit Salokoski, How Kings Are Made – How Kingship Changes (University of Helsinki, 2006), pp. 252-254","date_citation_display":"","object_display":"Bird-masked circumcision officiants sound bullroarers during boys' cutting and possession by the Big Bird.","function_display":"Kwanyama circumcision is described as a secret rite in which boys are eaten by a Big Bird, women of fertile age are banished, and Bird-men sound bullroarers during the cutting.","confidence_display":"medium","attestation_label":"ethnographic attestation","etymology_hedge":"","people_key":"kwanyama","display_name":"Kwanyama edila circumcision Big Birds","image":{"full":"assets/objects/museum_harvest/bm_E_Af1937-0312-71.jpg","thumb":"assets/objects/museum_harvest/thumbs/bm_E_Af1937-0312-71_thumb.jpg","alt":"Long orange-brown wooden bullroarer collected in Angola in 1937, with a pointed blade, cord at one end and several fibre strips wrapped around its middle.","credit":"© The Trustees of the British Museum (E/Af1937-0312-71)","license":"CC BY-NC-SA 4.0","source_page":"https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/E_Af1937-0312-71","rehosted":true,"representative":true,"caption":"Angolan bullroarer with attached cord.","pool_id":"auto-museum_harvest--bm_E_Af1937-0312-71"},"slug":"afr-002-kwanyama-owambo"}