Bogadjim and the Asa festival

Source term: bull-roarer

Asa: the Bogadjim initiation cult and festival, with its Asa house and Asa square. mulung-airas: circumcision ("prepuce to drop").

At Bogadjim on Astrolabe Bay, boys were circumcised only once in ten or fifteen years, at the Asa festival, and a village whose own festival was not yet due might send its sons to a trading partner's instead. There an absent father was replaced by his trade-friend, who made the boy's ornaments and saw to his rites. For months the novices lived shut in the Asa house, forbidden cooked food, water and washing, and hidden from women; each morning a father set his son's food in a little model hut beside his couch. The bullroarer was known at Bogadjim too. It most likely held the same place at these festivals as it did at Finschhafen, where its roar was the voice of the being who swallowed the boys.

Particulars

Object

A bull-roarer; its form is not recorded.

Function

Not recorded.