The Bullroarer Atlas

ASEXP-001 - ethnographic attestation

Sangtam (general) / Naga Hills, Assam

Naga Hills - present Nagaland - South Asia - Northeast India

Play / practical

Representative—not this record’s object: Roy’s Southern Sangtam bullroarer from the Naga Hills.
Representative—not this record’s object: Roy’s Southern Sangtam bullroarer from the Naga Hills. S. C. Roy, Oraon Religion and Customs (1928), Illustration 17; specimens supplied by J. H. Hutton Public domain Image source

athakupa Sangtam Naga (Nagaland, India)

Source term: toy bull-roarer

Among the Sangtam objects that John Henry Hutton presented to the Pitt Rivers Museum, and that its 1927 report recorded by donation, was a child's plaything: a toy bull-roarer tied to a stick, listed in the same breath as a bamboo pop-gun and a string-worked spring-clapper made to scare birds. Hutton (1885-1968), the deputy commissioner and political officer who governed and studied the Naga Hills of Assam, gathered it not as a sacred instrument but as ordinary material culture from village life. The published list gives only the bare provenance "Sangtam" and no accession number, so which Sangtam community it came from is not recorded. In the museum's earlier Naga accessions the same whirring toy turns up again, noted among the Angami as a thing boys spun for amusement and among the Sema as a device for scaring birds off the crops.

bamboo pop-gun, spring-clapper (bird-scare) worked by a string, toy bull-roarer tied to a stick, Sangtam

Pitt Rivers Museum Annual Report 1927, Accessions by Donation, "Objects collected by the donor in the Naga Hills, Assam" (presented by J. H. Hutton)
Object
Toy bull-roarer tied to a stick; Pitt Rivers Museum accession by loan from J. H. Hutton, Naga Hills, Assam.
Function
Children's toy; donated alongside a spring-clapper bird-scare and pottery from the same Sangtam collection.
Map confidence
medium - Representative regional anchor for general/Northern Sangtam territory (Kiphire district); not an exact findspot. Distinct from Southern Sangtam (NAGA-004).
Source location
PRM 1927 Annual Report, Accessions by Loan section

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