The Bullroarer Atlas

MUS2026-030 - museum specimen

Karbi

Karbi Anglong, Assam - South Asia - Northeast India

Function not recorded

Six Assam-hills bull-roarers as figured by S. C. Roy in 1928: Angami examples from Khonoma and Khizabarui, an Angami piece from Larwie, a...
Representative image. Six Assam-hills bull-roarers as figured by S. C. Roy in 1928: Angami examples from Khonoma and Khizabarui, an Angami piece from Larwie, a bull-roarer from the Khasia and Jaintia Hills said to cause pestilence, a Southern Sangtam piece said to call up tigers, and a Sema Naga bull-roarer — shown for the general type. The Karbi instrument documented here is known only through a museum photograph (Kulturhistorisk museum, Oslo, UEM46949), which turns out to show a buzzing disc, a different class of instrument. S. C. Roy, Oraon Religion and Customs (Ranchi, 1928), plate; specimens supplied by J. H. Hutton; scan archive.org dli.ernet.107911 Public domain Image source

Source term: bull-roarer

"Brummer" is the Norwegian museum cataloguing term for a bullroarer/spun aerophone (cf. the Norwegian "hurre" for the same instrument).

A Karbi bull-roarer, catalogued by the Kulturhistorisk museum at the University of Oslo as a brummer and linked in DigitaltMuseum to Karbi material from India. The recovered record fixes the object ID and people; it does not preserve how the piece was sounded, who used it, or whether it had any ritual or gender restriction.

brummer

DigitaltMuseum record 0210213508051 / KHM Oslo UEM46949
Object
Karbi bull-roarer / brummer in Kulturhistorisk museum, Universitetet i Oslo (KHM Oslo UEM46949).
Function
Not recorded.
Map confidence
medium - approximate culture/locality centroid
Source location
KHM Oslo UEM46949

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