{"id":"RAJMALA1929-001","label":"Tipra (Tripuri) Ker-puja bhemra bullroarer","people_or_site":"Tipra / Tripuri Ker-puja","country_current":"India","historic_region":"Former Tripura State / Tripura ritual sphere","macroregion":"South Asia / Northeast India","local_name":"bhemra / bhamra","source_term":"bhemra / bhamra","source_language":"Bengali; English translation","object_description":"Broad bamboo slat pierced at one end and corded through the perforation; whirled by holding the free end of the cord.","function_summary":"Sounded at Ker-puja, held first at the capital and then in every hill village.","attestation_type":"historical_text","source_key":"rajmala1929_tipra_kerpuja_bhemra","source_type":"historical_text","source_url":"https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.303440","page_or_plate":"printed pp. 145-146; Internet Archive image leaf 311","map_confidence":"medium","plot_status":"plot_with_caveat","coordinate_basis":"Present Tripura regional centroid used only as a ritual-sphere proxy; the source names neither a capital, village, nor findspot.","jade_complex_role":"","blurb":"Once the boundary of Ker-puja was proclaimed, the rite became a religious lockdown: nobody could enter or leave, and inside the sealed ground no one — not even the king — might wear shoes, light a fire, dance or sing. A household overtaken by a birth or a death paid a fine to cross the line. Into that enforced hush broke the bhemra, a broad bamboo strip whirled on a cord until it boomed bho bho, loud, deep and far-carrying — a ritualistic use of bull-roarers, the philologist Suniti Kumar Chatterji noted, 'not known in any Brahmanical worship.' On the rite's success, people believed, hung the fortune of Tripura's realm for the year to come.","pull_quote":"[Ker-puja] is a picture of that age when there was no light, no sound, no living thing, no birth or death... In the silence of Ker-puja, as when sound first broke the deep silence at the dawn of creation, the bho bho of the bhemrai seems now and then to be creating sound in a soundless universe.","pull_quote_translation":"","pull_quote_cite":"Sri Rajmala, vol. 1 (1929), editorial commentary, p. 145; working translation from the Bengali.","term_gloss":"bhemra / bhamra: the bamboo slat whirled at Ker-puja; Sri Rajmala calls it bhemrai or bhomrai.","cls":"sacred","class_label":"Sacred / spirit","color":"#8A5A2B","is_candidate":false,"flags":[],"f_jade_complex":false,"f_women_taboo":false,"f_women_special":false,"f_snake":false,"sources":[{"citation":"Sri Rajmala, vol. 1 (1929), editorial commentary on Ker-puja, pp. 144-145; Suniti Kumar Chatterji, Kirata-Jana-Krti (1951), p. 137","url":"https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.303440"}],"source_citations":"Sri Rajmala, vol. 1 (1929), editorial commentary on Ker-puja, pp. 144-145; Suniti Kumar Chatterji, Kirata-Jana-Krti (1951), p. 137","source_display":"Sri Rajmala, vol. 1 (1929), editorial commentary on Ker-puja, pp. 144-145; Suniti Kumar Chatterji, Kirata-Jana-Krti (1951), p. 137","date_citation_display":"","object_display":"Broad bamboo slat pierced at one end and corded through the perforation; whirled by holding the free end of the cord.","function_display":"Sounded at Ker-puja, held first at the capital and then in every hill village.","confidence_display":"medium","attestation_label":"historical text","etymology_hedge":"","people_key":"tipra","display_name":"Tipra (Tripuri) Ker-puja bhemra bullroarer","image":{"full":"assets/objects/review_2026_07_15/NAGA-007_prm_1923_84_909.jpg","thumb":"assets/objects/review_2026_07_15/thumbs/NAGA-007_prm_1923_84_909_thumb.jpg","alt":"Sümi hewu with its string attached, Pitt Rivers Museum 1923.84.909.","credit":"Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford (1923.84.909)","license":"© Pitt Rivers Museum — non-commercial/educational reuse with attribution","source_page":"https://prm.ox.ac.uk/collections-online#/item/prm-object-39621","rehosted":true,"representative":true,"caption":"Sümi hewu with its string attached, Pitt Rivers Museum 1923.84.909","pool_id":"auto-review_2026_07_15--NAGA-007_prm_1923_84_909","auto_assigned":true},"slug":"rajmala1929-001-tipra-tripuri-ker-puja"}