KUNST2026-003 - museum specimen
Aranda churinga, Spencer collection (Kunstkamera, 1908)
Central Australia (Aranda - Arrernte country)
Restricted
tjurunga (чуринга) Russian
Source term: чуринга — знак предков ('a sign of the ancestors')
In Aranda (Arrernte), tjurunga (чуринга) marks the sacred, secret, and hidden — most often the flat engraved stones and boards of the totemic ancestors.
Etymology. In Arrernte, churinga (tjurunga) means 'sacred, secret': Spencer and Gillen gloss it as a term applied both to the sacred objects and to the sacred quality they possess — above all the engraved stones and boards of the totemic ancestors, whose smaller perforated wooden members are the whirled bull-roarers (churinga irula, 'wooden churinga or bull-roarer'). Each board houses the spirit of the ancestor who carried it, so the bull-roarer shares its name with the entire class of ancestor-spirit boards. (high confidence)
For Aranda initiates, a churinga was not merely a decorated board. It held the continuing presence of an ancestral being and could be revealed to a young man as his ‘other body.’ Swung on its cord, this pierced wooden churinga gave that hidden ancestral presence a voice.
Право прикасаться к чурингам и даже видеть их принадлежит только мужчинам, прошедшим сложные обряды инициации.
The right to touch churingas — and even to see them — belongs only to men who have passed through the complex rites of initiation.
Kunstkamera, «Чуринга — знак предков» exhibition (2008)
- Object
- Elongated pointed-oval wooden churinga engraved with concentric-circle designs and pierced near one narrow tip; entered the Kunstkamera with Baldwin Spencer’s collection in 1908.
- Function
- Secret-sacred ancestral board shown only to initiated men; bullroarer use for this particular object remains unconfirmed.
- Map confidence
- medium_high - Alice Springs region, heart of Aranda country and of Spencer & Gillen's Central Australian fieldwork
- Source location
Page references
Kunstkamera exhibition page, «Чуринга — знак предков» (2008)
- Spirit voice
- Initiation rite