{"id":"AUSMAIN-009","label":"Ngarigo","people_or_site":"Ngarigo","country_current":"Australia","historic_region":"Monaro / Snowy Mountains (Cooma, Bombala)","macroregion":"Australia / Southeast","local_name":"Mudji","source_term":"Mudji","source_language":"","object_description":"Whirled slat carried by Kuringal messengers with spear, boomerang, shield.","function_summary":"Initiation voice; credentials for the messenger summoning the Bunan/Kuringal.","attestation_type":"secondary_catalog","source_key":"mining2026","source_type":"secondary_literature","source_url":"https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Native_Tribes_of_South-East_Australia/Chapter_11","page_or_plate":"p. 687 (Mudji also p. 515)","map_confidence":"high","plot_status":"plot","coordinate_basis":"approximate territory centroid (mining 2026)","jade_complex_role":"","blurb":"Among the Ngarigo of the Monaro tableland and Snowy Mountains, a messenger sent to summon people to the Kuringal initiation carried a bull-roarer, the mudji, together with a spear, boomerang, and shield; these were his token, the proof that the call was genuine. The mudji's roaring was the voice of Daramulun, the sky-being who had instituted the rites: the sound represents the muttering of thunder, and the thunder is the voice of Daramulun. In Ngarigo a message was Mabun and a messenger Gunumilli. A. W. Howitt — magistrate and mines warden on the Maneroo through the 1880s — collected a related coastal Yuin bull-roarer labelled the voice of Daramulun, and it passed through E. B. Tylor to the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford.","pull_quote":"The consensus of opinion was that if a woman found a Mudthi and showed it to a man, he would kill her. If a man showed a Mudthi to a woman or a child, he would be killed, and not unlikely those belonging to him also.","pull_quote_translation":"","pull_quote_cite":"Howitt, The Native Tribes of South-East Australia (1904), p. 563","term_gloss":"Mudji: the Ngarigo name for the bull-roarer, whose roaring was the voice of the sky-being Daramulun, heard in thunder.","cls":"restricted","class_label":"Restricted","color":"#A43C2F","is_candidate":false,"flags":["spirit_voice","initiation","women_taboo"],"f_jade_complex":false,"f_women_taboo":true,"f_women_special":false,"f_snake":false,"sources":[{"citation":"Howitt, Native Tribes of South-East Australia (1904)","url":"https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Native_Tribes_of_South-East_Australia/Chapter_11","archive":"https://web.archive.org/web/20251115041514/https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Native_Tribes_of_South-East_Australia/Chapter_11"}],"source_citations":"Howitt, Native Tribes of South-East Australia (1904)","source_display":"Howitt, Native Tribes of South-East Australia (1904)","date_citation_display":"","object_display":"Whirled slat carried by Kuringal messengers with spear, boomerang, shield.","function_display":"Initiation voice; credentials for the messenger summoning the Bunan/Kuringal.","confidence_display":"high","attestation_label":"secondary catalog","etymology_hedge":"","people_key":"ngarigo","display_name":"Ngarigo","image":{"full":"assets/objects/pd_plates/howitt1904_fig29_yuin_mudthi.jpg","thumb":"assets/objects/pd_plates/howitt1904_fig29_yuin_mudthi_thumb.jpg","alt":"Howitt’s drawing of the Yuin mudthi at left, with a lengthwise groove and end hole, beside the broader Dieri yuntha with short transverse incisions and an attached cord.","credit":"A. W. Howitt, The Native Tribes of South-East Australia (1904), fig. 29","license":"Public domain (published 1904)","source_page":"https://archive.org/details/nativetribesofso00howiuoft","rehosted":true,"representative":true,"caption":"Howitt’s drawing of the Yuin bull-roarer mudthi."},"slug":"ausmain-009-ngarigo"}