The Bullroarer Atlas

HAYS1986-001 - ethnographic attestation

Baruya

Papua New Guinea - Anga-Eastern Highlands men's cult zone - Oceania - Sahul

Restricted

A plain New Guinea bull-roarer, its dark ridged blade unpainted, the forked butt bound in bast cord that runs up to a tied bundle of dried...
Representative image. A plain New Guinea bull-roarer, its dark ridged blade unpainted, the forked butt bound in bast cord that runs up to a tied bundle of dried grass; the Baruya swung an instrument like this alongside their sacred flutes in rites women and children were forbidden even to see, though no photograph of their own bull-roarer survives. © The Trustees of the British Museum (E/Oc1987-05-122) CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 Image source

Source term: bullroarer

Among the Baruya of Papua New Guinea's Eastern Highlands, the bullroarer was swung alongside the sacred flutes during the initiation of boys, and its sound, with that of the flutes, was the "voices of spirits that speak to men in the forest." Women and children were forbidden even to see the object. Terence Hays entered the Baruya in his 1986 survey of Highland sacred wind instruments, marking the group with both flutes and bullroarer in an initiation context, and drew the spirit-voice line from Maurice Godelier, who began living among the Baruya in 1967. Godelier recorded the secret teaching the instruments concealed: the Baruya hold that women existed before men and owned the first flutes, which the men later took from them. The bullroarers were said to have come from the yimaka, the forest spirits, as "arrows" found stuck in tree trunks, and carried the men's powers of death and war; the flute carried the life-power expropriated from women. A boy who told a woman that it was men, not spirits, who made the sounds faced death.

For the Baruya, together with flutes they conveyed the "voices of spirits that speak to men in the forest when they are initiating the boys" (Godelier 1982: 8)

Hays 1986:439, quoting Godelier 1982:8
Object
A bullroarer swung alongside the sacred flutes; women and children were forbidden even to see it.
Function
Male initiation sacred-instrument complex; Hays' table marks `B = bullroarer` for Baruya and the article discusses the voices of spirits in the same cultic context.
Map confidence
medium - Area anchor for Baruya territory in the Wonenara/Marawaka Eastern Highlands zone; future Godelier or language-atlas evidence may refine the coordinate.
Source location
Anthropos p. 436 table and pp. 439-440

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  • AuyanaPapua New Guinea - Eastern Highlands / Anga-Eastern Highlands men's cult zone - Restricted
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  • GawacPapua New Guinea - Morobe - Restricted
  • PurariPapua New Guinea - Gulf - Restricted
  • AgarabiPapua New Guinea - Eastern Highlands - Restricted
  • Ankave-Anga, Suowi ValleyPapua New Guinea - Southern Anga territory, northernmost Gulf Province at the Morobe / Eastern Highlands junction (Suowi-Mbwei Valley) - Restricted