NAGA-005 - museum specimen
Rengma / Meluri village
Naga Hills - present Nagaland - South Asia - Northeast India
Play / practical
aowu-prurr English
aowu-prurr: Rengma Naga name for the bull-roarer, recorded for the Naked Rengma at Meluri as a boy's whirling toy.
The Rengma of Meluri made no claim on this bull-roarer: they freely admitted they had borrowed it from their Sema neighbours, and it might not be carried into the village. Whirled on a cord tied through a hole near its point, the aowu-prurr buzzed out in the fields, and among the Eastern Rengma had shrunk to a boys' plaything — swung for amusement even while the crops were ripening, with no taboo to silence it. J.P. Mills collected this slat in the Naga Hills in 1933.
Bull-roarer, aowu-prurr, a boy's toy. The cord for whirling it being tied through a hole near point.
Pitt Rivers Museum object 1928.69.1634 (coll. J.P. Mills, Naked Rengma, Meluri, 5 Nov. 1933), Cambridge Naga Database record r10582
- Object
- Bull-roarer of the Naked Rengma Naga, Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford, acc. 1928.69.1634; coll. J. P. Mills at Meluri. Cord for whirling tied through a hole near the point (field catalogue).
- Function
- Crop-watching scarer in the fields (admittedly borrowed from the Semas, and may not be brought into the village); Eastern Rengma boys' toy, permitted even when the crops ripen
- Map confidence
- medium - Meluri public locality anchor from source village not museum
- Source location
- collection listing C666 | Mills 1937, pp. 84, 123 | PRM acc. 1928.69.1634 (Cambridge Naga Database r10582 / coll. 51)
- Toy / secular survival