The Bullroarer Atlas

AUSMAIN-027 - ethnographic attestation

Pindupi (Pintupi)

Western Desert, between Lake Mackay and Lake Macdonald along the WA - NT border (Kintore Range - Walungurru); Roheim's Pindupi data gathered from his 1929 base at Hermannsburg in Central Australia

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Spencer and Gillen's photographed emu churinga illustrates the general form; among the Pindupi west of Lake Mackay, Roheim describes the small...
Representative image. Spencer and Gillen's photographed emu churinga illustrates the general form; among the Pindupi west of Lake Mackay, Roheim describes the small perforated tjurunga called mandagi or namatuna as objects made specifically 'to be whirled,' distinct from the larger unholed churinga, but none is pictured here. Spencer & Gillen, The Native Tribes of Central Australia (1899), fig. 20 Public domain Image source

mandagi (Luritja group); namatuna Luritja / Western Desert language (Pindupi being one of the Luritja-speaking tribes; namatuna is Roheim's Aranda form)

Source term: mandagi

mandagi: the Luritja-group (hence Pindupi) name Roheim records for the whirled bull-roarer; namatuna is his Aranda form for the same instrument.

Etymology. mandagi is the bull-roarer word of the Luritja-speaking tribes Roheim worked with, including the Pindupi; he sets it beside Murngin mandelprindi and Nyulnyul mandeken as one of the striking word-parallels running across Australia, but records no literal meaning. In the Luritja love-magic songs the instrument is also called kalinka, which Roheim derives from kalu, 'penis.' (high confidence)

Among the Pindupi (Pintupi) of the Western Desert, the bull-roarer was a secret of initiated men. Geza Roheim, working from Hermannsburg in 1929 among the Luritja-speaking western tribes, recorded it as a small whirled slat handed to boys before they were brought back into camp, with strict instructions on where it could be sounded: keep to the thick scrub, away from the women's road. Whirled, it gave the roaring voice of the bull-roarer demon, the apuju, which novices learn at initiation is in fact made by the men. Its power, Roheim was told, came from blood drawn at the subincision wound, and the same instrument served in love magic. Roheim names it mandagi in the Luritja-speaking group to which the Pindupi belong (namatuna in the neighbouring Aranda); it is a true cord-whirled bull-roarer, and it belongs to a uniform initiation complex shared across the desert peoples he studied, the Pindupi among them.

Knatata remembers how, before being brought back into the camp, the boys are handed the bull-roarer (namatuna) and told "For the woman's road don't take it." "When you whirl it, you keep to the thick scrub only." This namatuna, which is used for love magic, receives its magical power from blood taken from the subincision opening.

Geza Roheim, The Eternal Ones of the Dream (New York: International Universities Press, 1945), pp. 13-14.
Object
A small perforated wooden tjurunga whirled on a cord to roar. Roheim describes these as the little sacred objects 'with holes in them to be used as bull-roarers and to be whirled,' as distinct from the large unperforated tjurunga.
Function
Secret men's bull-roarer handed to boys at male initiation and whirled away from women to make the roaring voice of the 'bull-roarer demon' (apuju); also charged with subincision blood for love magic.
Map confidence
medium - approximate territory centroid (Pintupi lands between Lake Mackay and Lake Macdonald, Mount Liebig to Jupiter Well; anchored near the Kintore Range / Walungurru on the WA/NT border)
Source location
pp. 13-14 (Ch. I, "The Meaning of Totemic Myth"); bull-roarer terminology p. iv (introduction); cf. p. 222

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  • NambutjiAustralia - Northern Western Desert, Luritja-speaking country north of the Pitjantjatjara and west of the Aranda, around the Mount Liebig–Haasts Bluff–Lake Macdonald corridor on the Northern Territory side near the Western Australia border - Restricted
  • Ngatatara (Ngadadjara / Ngaatjatjarra)Australia - Western Desert, centred on the Warburton Ranges (eastern WA, extending into SW Northern Territory and NW South Australia); the namatuna myth was recorded by Roheim from the Ngatatara man Kulaia (with the Aranda man Thomas) at Hermannsburg Mission, Aranda country (NT) - Restricted
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  • PitjantjatjaraAustralia - Anangu lands, NW South Australia / SW Northern Territory near Uluru - Restricted
  • Mardu / Mardudjara (Western Desert; Jigalong)Australia - Western Desert of Western Australia, around Lake Disappointment (Kumpupintil) on the Little Sandy / Gibson Desert margins; people now centred on Jigalong - Restricted
  • Anula / Anula neighbours of BinbingaAustralia - Western Gulf of Carpentaria - Restricted