The Bullroarer Atlas

No. NAGA-003

Angami Khonoma boys' toy and bird-scarer bullroarer

Naga Hills · present Nagaland · South Asia · Northeast India

Play / practical

Angami bullroarer from Khonoma, 41 cm, painted along its length; Pitt Rivers 1923.84.958.
Plate I. Angami bullroarer from Khonoma, 41 cm, painted along its length; Pitt Rivers 1923.84.958. Image source
Roy’s 1928 plate of six bullroarers from the Assam hills, suspended by cords from rods; no. 1 is the long tapered Angami toy from Khonoma.
Plate II. Roy’s 1928 plate of bull-roarers from the Assam hills; item 1 is an Angami toy from Khonoma. Public domain · Image source

Source term: bull-roarer

When the Angami grain ripened at Khonoma, the fields filled with noise. Hutton counted scarecrows without number — basket-work hawks, cane hoops, human dummies swinging on bamboos, clappers that rapped in every gust, even a water-driven automaton rigged up at Jessami — and the village kept a genna, the Likwengi, marking the millet harvest and its season of "field-scaring." Into that din a boy could add his own: this forty-one-centimetre slat, swung on a cord until it roared. Half plaything, half bird-scarer, it was collected here by J. H. Hutton in 1922.

Bull-roarer used as a toy by boys or for scaring birds. Angami, Khonoma village.

Cambridge Naga Database, Pitt Rivers Museum collection record (collected J. H. Hutton, 1922)

Particulars

Object
A bullroarer 41 centimetres long, Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford, acc. 1923.84.958; collected and donated by J. H. Hutton, 1922-23 gift.
Function
Boys' toy or bird-scarer

Source

University of Cambridge, 'The Nagas' database, collection listing C624 (Angami, Khonoma); Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford, 1923.84.958 (J. H. Hutton gift, 1922); Roy 1928, illustration 17 item 1

View the source · archived

Part of The Bullroarer Atlas, companion to The Eve Theory of Consciousness.