MUS2026-101 - museum specimen
Maria Gond bull-roarer (museum)
India - Bastar, Chhattisgarh - South Asia
Play / practical
Burunga (halbi) French
Source term: bull-roarer
Burunga: the Halbi-language name recorded for this bull-roarer (rhombe) among the Maria/Muria Gond of Bastar.
For the Maria Gonds of Bastar, the bull-roarer was a thing for boys. Grigson watched Hill Maria lads cut them from a strip of split bamboo, point one end, notch it for a bark string looped round a finger, and whirl the blade counter-clockwise until it roared — "purely a toy," he decided, with "no religious or magical significance." This example, called Burunga in Halbi, was collected at Gotpal by the ethnomusicologist Genevieve Dournon and passed from the Musée de l'Homme to the Quai Branly.
It seems to be purely a toy, and to have no religious or magical significance. At various camps the lads present made them on request; none were holed at the bottom.
Rhombe and its stick
W. V. Grigson, The Maria Gonds of Bastar (1938), p. 183
- Object
- Quai Branly object 71.1979.20.19.1-2: rhombe and stick of the Maria/Muria Gond, local name Burunga (halbi), from Gotpal.
- Function
- Quai Branly API identifies a Maria/Muria Gond rhombe and stick named Burunga (halbi); no use or gender language is recorded.
- Map confidence
- high - approximate culture/locality centroid
- Source location
Page references
Quai Branly object record 274061 (inv. 71.1979.20.19.1-2); provenance cross-ref CREM-CNRS collection CNRSMH_E_1980_009_001 | Grigson 1938, p. 183 and glossary
- Toy / secular survival