{"id":"SASIA-004","label":"Chittagong notched blade","people_or_site":"Unknown Chittagong District group","country_current":"Bangladesh","historic_region":"Chittagong District","macroregion":"South Asia / Bangladesh","local_name":"","source_term":"Bull-roarer","source_language":"English","object_description":"Single Indian Museum specimen said to come from Chittagong District","function_summary":"A toy, in use among the Muslims of Chittagong.","attestation_type":"secondary_catalog","source_key":"ROY_1927_MAN_IN_INDIA_CHITTAGONG","source_type":"review_summary_text","source_url":"https://archive.org/download/in.ernet.dli.2015.56128/2015.56128.Man-In-India-Vol7_djvu.txt","page_or_plate":"Roy summary, Man in India vol. 7 printed pp. 62-63 | Roy, JBORS XIII (1927), pp. 54-61 | Meerwarth 1917, p. 3","map_confidence":"medium_high","plot_status":"plot_with_caveat","coordinate_basis":"Chittagong District regional anchor; not Indian Museum Kolkata","jade_complex_role":"","blurb":"A single bull-roarer in the Indian Museum is recorded as coming from the Chittagong District, but, as Sarat Chandra Roy noted in his 1927 survey, neither the exact place where it was found nor the use made of it was ever written down. The Chittagong piece, like the Santal one Roy had himself found in a Monghyr village, is notched rather than perforated to take its string. With no survey of Indian bull-roarers to draw on, Roy could set it only against the tribes he knew inland: among the Mundas, Hos, and Santals the instrument survived in a few villages merely as children's toys, while only among the Oraons did it keep a ceremonial, magico-religious life, with hundreds of thin bamboo slats threaded on strings hung in rows from the beams of bachelors' dormitories that it was a sin for women to enter. Of the Chittagong piece itself, Roy could record only its shape.","pull_quote":"There is only one specimen of the Bull-roarer in the Indian museum, said to have come from the Chittagong District, but neither the exact place of find nor the use made of it has been recorded.","pull_quote_translation":"","pull_quote_cite":"Sarat Chandra Roy, \"The Bull-roarer in India,\" Man in India vol. 7 (1927), pp. 62-63","term_gloss":"","cls":"play_practical","class_label":"Play / practical","color":"#24766D","is_candidate":false,"flags":[],"f_jade_complex":false,"f_women_taboo":false,"f_women_special":false,"f_snake":false,"sources":[{"citation":"Sarat Chandra Roy, 'The Bull-Roarer in India,' Journal of the Bihar and Orissa Research Society 13(1) (1927): 54-61, summarized in Man in India 7 (1927), pp. 62-63; A. M. Meerwarth, A Guide to the Collection of Musical Instruments Exhibited in the Ethnographical Gallery of the Indian Museum, Calcutta (1917), p. 3; Indian Museum, Calcutta, reg. no. 11007","url":"https://archive.org/download/in.ernet.dli.2015.56128/2015.56128.Man-In-India-Vol7_djvu.txt"}],"source_citations":"Sarat Chandra Roy, 'The Bull-Roarer in India,' Journal of the Bihar and Orissa Research Society 13(1) (1927): 54-61, summarized in Man in India 7 (1927), pp. 62-63; A. M. Meerwarth, A Guide to the Collection of Musical Instruments Exhibited in the Ethnographical Gallery of the Indian Museum, Calcutta (1917), p. 3; Indian Museum, Calcutta, reg. no. 11007","source_display":"Sarat Chandra Roy, 'The Bull-Roarer in India,' Journal of the Bihar and Orissa Research Society 13(1) (1927): 54-61, summarized in Man in India 7 (1927), pp. 62-63; A. M. Meerwarth, A Guide to the Collection of Musical Instruments Exhibited in the Ethnographical Gallery of the Indian Museum, Calcutta (1917), p. 3; Indian Museum, Calcutta, reg. no. 11007","date_citation_display":"","object_display":"Single Indian Museum specimen said to come from Chittagong District","function_display":"A toy, in use among the Muslims of Chittagong.","confidence_display":"medium to high","attestation_label":"secondary catalog","etymology_hedge":"","people_key":"chittagong","display_name":"Chittagong notched blade","image":{"full":"assets/objects/prm/prm_121560.jpg","thumb":"assets/objects/prm/thumbs/prm_121560_thumb.jpg","alt":"A double-pointed wood blade notched along both edges.","credit":"© Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford (acc. 1953.10.107)","license":"© Pitt Rivers Museum — non-commercial/educational reuse with attribution","source_page":"https://prm.ox.ac.uk/collections-online#/item/prm-object-121560","rehosted":true,"representative":true,"caption":"A double-pointed wood blade notched along both edges.","additional":[{"full":"assets/objects/hunt_2026_10_03/SASIA-004_meerwarth1917_pl1.jpg","thumb":"assets/objects/hunt_2026_10_03/thumbs/SASIA-004_meerwarth1917_pl1_thumb.jpg","credit":"A. M. Meerwarth, Guide to the Collection of Musical Instruments, Indian Museum, Calcutta (1917), pl. I; photo: S. C. Mondul","license":"No explicit licence or rights statement is given on the Internet Archive item page or in its metadata.","source_page":"https://archive.org/details/guidetocollectio00indi/page/n27/mode/1up","rehosted":true,"representative":false,"caption":"Indian Museum instrument plate, 1917; the small Chittagong bullroarer, a blade on a long cord with a curved stick, stands at lower right."}]},"slug":"sasia-004-unknown-chittagong-district-group"}