BELL1994-001 - lexical attestation
Bon'da'ban, the ceremonial noisemaker
Australia - Sunshine Coast–Noosa - Mary River - Oceania - Sahul
Sacred / spirit
bon’da’ban
Source term: bullroarer
bon’da’ban: Gubbi-Gubbi bullroarer; ceremonial noise-making instrument.
Gubbi-Gubbi (Kabi Kabi) country runs from the Sunshine Coast and Noosa inland along the Mary River. The word bon'da'ban was written down in a 1943 vocabulary of south-east Queensland languages, and it came back into Gubbi-Gubbi hands in 1994, when Jeanie Bell — whose great-grandmothers were born on K'gari — compiled a dictionary of Gubbi-Gubbi and Butchulla so that, as she put it, the descendants could rediscover the ways of the old people. The entry allows the word six words of English: bullroarer, a ceremonial noise-making instrument. Which ceremony it sounded at, and who could hear it, the wordlist does not say.
bon'da'ban (n) bullroarer: ceremonial noise-making instrument (W)
Bell and Seed, Dictionary of the Gubbi-Gubbi and Butchulla Languages, 1994, printed p. 16
- Object
- A bullroarer known in Gubbi-Gubbi as bon'da'ban; the dictionary entry gives no material, size or form.
- Function
- A ceremonial noise-making instrument; no particular rite is named.
- Source
- Jeanie Bell with Amanda Seed, Dictionary of the Gubbi-Gubbi and Butchulla Languages, 1994; entry in the Gubbi section
- Source location
- PDF p. 21 / printed p. 16
- Source confidence
- medium Representative Gubbi-Gubbi country anchor; dictionary entry has no event locality.