The Bullroarer Atlas

GUPTA1955-001 - ethnographic attestation

Nicobar monsoon roarers on sixty-foot poles

India - Central Nicobar Islands - South Asia

Weather / fertility magic

Malay musical windmill, Kampong Jarum: paired bamboo whistles. Balfour, 1904.
Representative — not this record’s object. · Malay musical windmill, Kampong Jarum: paired bamboo whistles. Balfour, 1904. · Public domain Image source

Source term: automatic bull-roarers

automatic bull-roarer — the official reports' English name for the wind-driven booming installation; no Nicobarese vernacular name is supplied.

On Katchall and Nancowry the instrument was taken out of human hands and given to the weather. A narrow plank, twisted and cut so the wind turns it on a central pin, carries at each end a node of bamboo facing the opposite way, its mouth part-stopped with rubber or wax; raised on seafront trees and poles forty to sixty feet high, the revolving wood booms exactly as a whirled blade does. The Nicobarese who put them up are sailors and coconut gardeners whose year is cut in two by the monsoons. The installations went up in the first week of November, with ceremony, as the southwest wind gave way to the northeast: a warning to navigators that the season had turned, and a greeting to the incoming monsoon and farewell to the outgoing.

This is their greeting to the incoming monsoon and farewell to the outgoing.

S. K. Gupta, 'The Andaman and Nicobar Islands,' Appendix A in Census of India 1951, Vol. XVII (1955), p. lviii.
Object
A narrow plank twisted and cut so as to revolve in the wind about a central pin, with oppositely facing bamboo nodes at its ends whose openings are partly blocked with rubber or wax, mounted on seafront trees and poles often forty to sixty feet high in the central Nicobars.
Function
Raised in the first week of November to mark the change from the southwest to the northeast monsoon, warn navigators, and ceremonially greet the incoming monsoon.
Source
S. K. Gupta, 'The Andaman and Nicobar Islands,' Appendix A in A. K. Ghosh, Census of India, 1951, Vol. XVII, Part I—Report, Part II—Tables (Government of India, 1955), printed p. lviii; Gupta quotes J. H. Hutton's exact mechanism description, then corrects its significance from his own reports at Katchall and Nancowry; Earlier independent publication: M.…
Source location
Page references

Gupta 1955, printed p. lviii (PDF p. 61); Bonington 1932, printed p. 77

Source confidence
medium to high Nancowry island/harbour regional anchor for a practice reported at both Nancowry and Katchall; not an installation coordinate.

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