The Bullroarer Atlas

No. NAGA-006

Lhota Okotso threm-threm crop-season boys' toy

Naga Hills · present Nagaland · South Asia · Northeast India

Play / practical

Lhota Naga threm-threm bullroarer from Okotso village, PRM 1928.69.320: a slim flat blade with dark crossed lines and cord wound around one end.
Plate I. Lhota Naga threm-threm bull-roarer, Okotso village. PRM 1928.69.320. Image source
Lhota Naga threm-threm from Okotso: a narrow pale slat with dark cord bindings near one end and a cord tied at the other.
Plate II. Lhota Naga threm-threm bull-roarer, Okotso village. PRM 1928.69.320. Image source

threm-threm (thren-threm)

Source term: threm-threm

threm-threm: Lhota Naga name for the bull-roarer

A 25-centimetre bull-roarer from the Lhota Naga village of Okotso, now in the Pitt Rivers Museum. The Lhota called it threm-threm. It was a boy's toy, not used by girls, swung chiefly while the crops were growing, with no beliefs attached to it. Mills's monograph The Lhota Nagas, whose acknowledgements thank Etsisao and Chongsemo of Okotso, never mentions it.

Threm-threm, bull-roarer, a boy's toy, not used by girls. Chiefly used while crops are growing; no beliefs concerning it.

Pitt Rivers Museum catalogue record, Lhota bull-roarer from Okotso (Cambridge Naga Database, coll. 51)

Particulars

Object
A thin, blunt-ended wooden slat 25 cm long, marked with burnt lines and strung with bark; Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford, acc. 1928.69.320 (J. P. Mills coll.).

Sources

  1. University of Cambridge, The Nagas database, collection 51, record C667, Lhota bull-roarer from Okotso View · archived
  2. Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford, object 1928.69.320 View · archived

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