Konyak Tamlu kampi rain bullroarer

kampi

Source term: Kampi

kampi: the Konyak name for the rain-inducing bull-roarer.

Etymology. kampi is the Konyak name for the bullroarer whirled to bring rain.

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. It was no display piece: this kampi had been swung in earnest.

This one was certainly used and was not symbolic or decorative.

Cambridge Naga Database, catalogue record R10584 (Pitt Rivers Museum 1953.10.109)

Particulars

Object

Wood bullroarer with fibre cord attached to notch

Function

Swung to induce rain.