EXH2026-032 - secondary catalog
Semaq Beri (Evans's 'Sakai-Jakun'), Tekai River
Malaysia - Tekai River, Jerantut district, Pahang - Southeast Asia - Malay Peninsula
Function not recorded
Source term: bull-roarer (Evans's gloss)
Among the Sakai-Jakun whom Ivor Evans met on the Tekai River in Pahang in the 1910s, thunder was the noise the spirit Nenek — the word means "ancestor" in Malay — makes by banging his arms against his sides to sound his armpits; the lightning that comes with it is Nenek flashing a thin board tied to a string, which Evans glossed as a bull-roarer. The same people held that an anteater holds up the sun, bringing night when it curls its body around it and day when it unrolls. No human bull-roarer rite or toy is recorded here: the instrument appears only in the sky, as the thunder spirit's means of making lightning flash. The journal's editor appended a one-line note to Evans's account, that the bull-roarer was known to the Malays of the east coast.
Thunder, they say, is caused by a spirit called Nenek (Mal. = ancestor), who makes a noise in his armpits by banging his arms against his sides. He also makes the lightning by flashing about a thin board which is attached to a string (i.e., a bull-roarer).
Evans, "Some Sakai Beliefs and Customs," JRAI 48 (1918): 191
- Object
- Thin board attached to a string (mythic lightning-maker).
- Function
- Cosmology: the thunder spirit Nenek 'makes the lightning by flashing about a thin board which is attached to a string (i.e., a bull-roarer)' (Evans). A mythological attestation implying familiarity with the instrument.
- Map confidence
- medium - OpenStreetMap centroid for the named Sungai Tekai river way in Jerantut (way 758627029); the exact 1913 settlement reach is not recorded.
- Source location
- JRAI 48 (1918), p. 191