NAGA-001 - museum specimen
Konyak / Tamlu village
Naga Hills - present Nagaland - South Asia - Northeast India
Weather / fertility magic
kampi English
Source term: Kampi
kampi: the Konyak name for the rain-inducing bull-roarer.
Etymology. Cambridge Naga record identifies `kampi` as the Konyak name for the rain bullroarer. (high confidence)
Among the Konyak of Tamlu village, in what is now Nagaland, a bull-roarer called kampi was whirled to bring rain. Henry Balfour, first curator of the Pitt Rivers Museum, collected this one in November 1922 on his tour of the Naga Hills; it is a length of wood 45 centimetres long, with the cord lashed to a notch cut in the end rather than passed through a drilled hole, as elsewhere. The museum's record is emphatic that it was no display piece: this one was certainly used and was not symbolic or decorative.
This one was certainly used and was not symbolic or decorative.
Cambridge Naga Database, catalogue record R10584 (Pitt Rivers Museum 1953.10.109)
- Object
- Wood bullroarer with fibre cord attached to notch
- Function
- Used to induce rain and described as actually used rather than decorative
- Map confidence
- high - Tamlu village source locality not Cambridge or Oxford
- Source location
- record R10584
- Weather / fertility magic
- Toy / secular survival