{"id":"CAMPBELL1959-001","label":"Marind-anim Dema-voice bullroarers","people_or_site":"Marind-anim","country_current":"Indonesia","historic_region":"Dutch South New Guinea / South Papua","macroregion":"Oceania / New Guinea","local_name":"sosom","source_term":"bull-roarers","source_language":"English","object_description":"A bull-roarer attributed to the Marind-anim, made of wood and lime and more than half a metre long, held in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.","function_summary":"Ritual Dema-spirit voice in Marind-anim ceremonies and boys' puberty rites.","attestation_type":"ethnographic_attestation","source_key":"campbell1959_masks","source_type":"comparative_secondary","source_url":"https://archive.org/details/demadescriptiona0000baal","page_or_plate":"van Baal 1966 (Dema), pp. 485ff. (Marind bullroarer as male symbol par excellence) and p. 534 (sasam vs. tang at the Mayo initiation); Wirz 1922 Teil I p. 82 (Schwirrholz as feared-spirit voice, source of the pull-quote) and Teil II pp. 25, 54-56, 85-86 (Sosom-Zeremonien tied to the Schwirrholz, eastern-coast localization, westernmost occurrence); Campbell 1959, Primitive Mythology, pp. 170-171; Wirz 1925 Teil III, Tafel 6 (additional image)","map_confidence":"medium","plot_status":"plot_with_caveat","coordinate_basis":"Marind-anim / Merauke-area regional anchor; Campbell gives people and region, not a village.","jade_complex_role":"","blurb":"Among the Marind-anim of Dutch South New Guinea, the whirring of the bull-roarer was the voice of the Dema, the ancestor-gods, rising out of the earth as the men danced. Joseph Campbell drew the account from the Swiss ethnologist Paul Wirz, who lived among the Marind near Merauke from 1916 to 1919; J. van Baal's definitive modern ethnography, Dema (1966), confirms and sharpens it. There the bullroarer (sasam) is the male symbol par excellence and is in effect Sosom himself, the dema said in myth to be the size of a coconut palm, to whom the men and boys were brought to be swallowed and given back unharmed. In the myth the older men, weary of the boy-giant's roaring, cut off his penis; it fell into the river and became a watersnake — and the bullroarer the men whirl is that severed member, the serpent's own voice. One tradition Wirz set down even makes the cult a counter-stroke in a war of secrecy between the sexes: the men, having discovered the women's secret dances, invented Sosom and his roar to frighten the women in turn. The whirled sasam is terminologically set apart from the tang, the cordless bullroarer-like object handed to each new initiate at the close of the Mayo rite.","pull_quote":"die Schwirrhölzer, deren brummender Ton als Stimme eines gefürchteten Geistes ausgelegt wird","pull_quote_translation":"the bullroarers, whose droning sound is interpreted as the voice of a feared spirit","pull_quote_cite":"Paul Wirz, Die Marind-anim von Holländisch-Süd-Neu-Guinea, Teil I (1922), p. 82","term_gloss":"sasam: the Marind-anim bullroarer, identified with Sosom, a dema (ancestor-spirit) and brother of Waba; distinct from the cordless tang. Kunst 1967 (section XXIV) records three further names for the same object: tepo-anim, and -- according to the palm species the blade is cut from -- gongai or arib.","cls":"restricted","class_label":"Restricted","color":"#A43C2F","is_candidate":false,"flags":["spirit_voice","snake","initiation","death_rebirth","women_taboo","toy_survival"],"f_jade_complex":false,"f_women_taboo":true,"f_women_special":false,"f_snake":true,"etymology":"Among the Marind-anim of southern New Guinea (the 'Tugeri' or 'Kaya-Kaya' of early reports) the bull-roarer is called sosom, the same name as Sosom, a mythical giant and dema (ancestor-spirit) said to arrive each year with the south-east monsoon, when initiate boys are presented to him to be swallowed and disgorged; the whirling instrument is his voice.","literal_gloss":"the giant Sosom","semantic_cluster":"spirit_voice; deity; ancestor; monster; initiation; secret_term; sound","etymology_confidence":"high","sources":[{"citation":"Joseph Campbell, The Masks of God: Primitive Mythology (New York: Viking, 1959; London: Secker & Warburg, 1960), pp. 170-171"},{"citation":"Paul Wirz, Die Marind-anim von Holländisch-Süd-Neu-Guinea, Teil I (1922), p. 82; Teil II (1922), pp. 25, 54-56, 85-86; Teil III (1925), Tafel 6"},{"citation":"J. van Baal, Dema (1966), pp. 485ff., 534","url":"https://archive.org/details/demadescriptiona0000baal"}],"source_citations":"Joseph Campbell, The Masks of God: Primitive Mythology (New York: Viking, 1959; London: Secker & Warburg, 1960), pp. 170-171; Paul Wirz, Die Marind-anim von Holländisch-Süd-Neu-Guinea, Teil I (1922), p. 82; Teil II (1922), pp. 25, 54-56, 85-86; Teil III (1925), Tafel 6; J. van Baal, Dema (1966), pp. 485ff., 534","source_display":"Joseph Campbell, The Masks of God: Primitive Mythology (New York: Viking, 1959; London: Secker & Warburg, 1960), pp. 170-171; Paul Wirz, Die Marind-anim von Holländisch-Süd-Neu-Guinea, Teil I (1922), p. 82; Teil II (1922), pp. 25, 54-56, 85-86; Teil III (1925), Tafel 6; J. van Baal, Dema (1966), pp. 485ff., 534","date_citation_display":"","object_display":"A bull-roarer attributed to the Marind-anim, made of wood and lime and more than half a metre long, held in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.","function_display":"Ritual Dema-spirit voice in Marind-anim ceremonies and boys' puberty rites.","confidence_display":"medium","attestation_label":"ethnographic attestation","etymology_hedge":"","people_key":"marind anim","display_name":"Marind-anim Dema-voice bullroarers","image":{"full":"assets/objects/CAMPBELL1959-001.jpg","thumb":"assets/objects/CAMPBELL1959-001_thumb.jpg","alt":"A dark wooden Marind-anim fish-form bullroarer, carved with angular geometric grooves near its pointed end, with a fibre cord and feather tassel attached at the opposite end.","credit":"Collectie Wereldmuseum (Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen), TM-2541-45, via Wikimedia Commons","license":"CC BY 4.0","source_page":"https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11840/83431","rehosted":true,"representative":false,"caption":"A fish-form Marind bull-roarer of dark carved wood.","additional":[{"full":"assets/objects/EXH2026-024_wirz1925_tafel6.jpg","thumb":"assets/objects/EXH2026-024_wirz1925_tafel6_thumb.jpg","credit":"P. Wirz, Die Marind-anim von Holländisch-Süd-Neu-Guinea, Teil III (Hamburg, 1925), Tafel 6","license":"Public domain (published 1925)","source_page":"https://books.google.com/books?id=tZlDAQAAMAAJ","rehosted":true,"representative":false,"caption":"Wirz’s plate of nineteen bullroarers from the Marind and their Yei and Torassi neighbours."},{"full":"assets/objects/CAMPBELL1959-001_wirz1925_tafel6_figs10-11.jpg","thumb":"assets/objects/CAMPBELL1959-001_wirz1925_tafel6_figs10-11_thumb.jpg","credit":"P. Wirz, Die Marind-anim von Holländisch-Süd-Neu-Guinea, Teil III (Hamburg, 1925), Tafel 6, figs. 10–11","license":"Public domain (published 1925)","source_page":"https://books.google.com/books?id=tZlDAQAAMAAJ","rehosted":true,"representative":false,"caption":"Two blades from Senayo on the Maro, carved on one face."}]},"slug":"campbell1959-001-marind-anim"}