{"id":"OCEXP-003","label":"Araga (Pentecost), Vanuatu — tavire bua toy","people_or_site":"Araga (Pentecost Island), Vanuatu","country_current":"Vanuatu","historic_region":"New Hebrides","macroregion":"Oceania / Vanuatu","local_name":"tavire bua","source_term":"bull-roarer","source_language":"English","object_description":"Swung-cord aerophone; local name means merely 'a bit of bamboo'. Used as a common plaything.","function_summary":"Secular toy; semantically minimal name, the most secularised form in Codrington's passage.","attestation_type":"ethnographic_attestation","source_key":"codrington1891melanesians","source_type":"primary_ethnography","source_url":"https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Melanesians:_Studies_in_their_Anthropology_and_Folklore/Chapter_17","page_or_plate":"p. 342","map_confidence":"medium","plot_status":"plot_with_caveat","coordinate_basis":"Pentecost Island centroid (Araga = northern Pentecost), central Vanuatu","jade_complex_role":"","blurb":"On Araga (Pentecost), the swung bull-roarer carried no name grander than the thing itself: tavire bua, \"a bit of bamboo.\" Codrington noted that only at Florida did the toy hold superstitious significance, where it was used in the Mysteries; everywhere else it was a common plaything. He set Araga among neighboring islands where the names still caught at something the instrument did — mala, \"a pig,\" on Vanua Lava, after the noise it made; tal-viv, \"a whirring string,\" on Maewo — while on Araga the word had narrowed to a bare description of the wood in hand.","pull_quote":"It is a common plaything; in Vanua Lava they call it mala, a pig, from the noise it makes; in Maewo it is tal-viv, a whirring string; in Araga it is merely tavire bua, a bit of bamboo.","pull_quote_translation":"","pull_quote_cite":"Codrington, The Melanesians (1891), Ch. XVII, p. 342","term_gloss":"tavire bua — Araga (Pentecost) for the bull-roarer, meaning \"a bit of bamboo.\"","cls":"play_practical","class_label":"Play / practical","color":"#24766D","is_candidate":false,"flags":["toy_survival"],"f_jade_complex":false,"f_women_taboo":false,"f_women_special":false,"f_snake":false,"etymology":"Semantically minimal toy name: object-material rather than ritual meaning.","literal_gloss":"a bit of bamboo","semantic_cluster":"material; object_description; toy","etymology_confidence":"high","sources":[{"citation":"Codrington, The Melanesians (1891), Ch. XVII","url":"https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Melanesians:_Studies_in_their_Anthropology_and_Folklore/Chapter_17","archive":"https://web.archive.org/web/20260108005046/https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Melanesians:_Studies_in_their_Anthropology_and_Folklore/Chapter_17"}],"source_citations":"Codrington, The Melanesians (1891), Ch. XVII","source_display":"Codrington, The Melanesians (1891), Ch. XVII","date_citation_display":"","object_display":"Swung-cord aerophone; local name means merely 'a bit of bamboo'. Used as a common plaything.","function_display":"Secular toy; semantically minimal name, the most secularised form in Codrington's passage.","confidence_display":"medium","attestation_label":"ethnographic attestation","etymology_hedge":"","people_key":"araga","display_name":"Araga (Pentecost), Vanuatu — tavire bua toy","image":{"full":"assets/objects/SPEISER1913-001_mkb_vb4000_ambrym.jpg","thumb":"assets/objects/SPEISER1913-001_mkb_vb4000_ambrym_thumb.jpg","alt":"Ambrym bullroarer collected by Felix Speiser.","credit":"Museum der Kulturen Basel (Vb 4000); collection Felix Speiser, 1912","license":"CC BY 4.0 (Museum der Kulturen Basel)","source_page":"https://onlinecollection.mkb.ch/","rehosted":true,"representative":true,"caption":"Ambrym bullroarer collected by Felix Speiser.","pool_id":"auto-SPEISER1913-001_mkb_vb4000_ambrym"},"slug":"ocexp-003-araga-pentecost-island-new-hebrides"}