MUS2026-054 - museum specimen
Thadou (Kuki)
Nagaland - Manipur hills, NE India - South Asia - Northeast India
Sacred / spirit
Source term: bull-roarer
A bull-roarer of the Thadou (Kuki) of the Manipur hills, now in the Pitt Rivers Museum at Oxford. Its use is recorded by the people's own ethnographer, William Shaw, who wrote that the Thadou bull-roarer was rarely seen and was sometimes swung to scare birds. Yet it was not wholly a toy: among the Shingshuan clan the old men objected to spinning it, on the ground that its sound called up the spirits, a fear Shaw found echoed among the neighbouring Khasi, Sangtam and Sema of Assam.
The Thado bull-roarer, rarely seen, is tied by a notch... It is sometimes used to scare birds, but in the Shingshuan clan, at [any] rate, the old men object to its use on the ground that it calls up the spirits.
William Shaw, Notes on the Thadou Kukis (1929), pp. 156-157
- Object
- Bull-roarer of the Thadou (Kuki), Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford (acc. 1928.69.683; Henry Balfour coll.).
- Function
- Sometimes swung to scare birds, yet not wholly a toy: among the Shingshuan clan the old men forbade it, for its sound "calls up the spirits" (Shaw 1929).
- Map confidence
- medium - approximate culture/locality centroid
- Source location
- Shaw 1929, pp. 156-157 (BULL-ROARER entry); specimen PRM 1928.69.683
- Spirit voice
- Toy / secular survival