MUS2026-054 - museum specimen
Thadou (Kuki) bull-roarer (Pitt Rivers)
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. Their own ethnographer, William Shaw, found it a rare object, hung on its cord by a notch rather than a bored hole, and swung now and then to scare birds — but not merely a toy: in the Shingshuan clan the old men objected to sounding it at all, for its voice summoned the spirits. Shaw heard the same dread from the Khasi, but other hill peoples read the voice differently — the Southern Sangtam said it drew tigers, and the Sema turned it protective outright, hanging imitation bull-roarers in their doorways at Mishilimi to ward off sickness.
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
Page references
Shaw 1929, pp. 156-157 (BULL-ROARER entry); specimen PRM 1928.69.683
- Spirit voice
- Toy / secular survival