NAGA-006 - museum specimen
Lhota / Okotso village
Naga Hills - present Nagaland - South Asia - Northeast India
Play / practical
threm-threm (thren-threm) English
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. By the catalogue note 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; the catalogue line is the only record.
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)
- Object
- Bullroarer, 25 cm, a boy's toy not used by girls, chiefly used while crops are growing; Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford, acc. 1928.69.320 (Henry Balfour coll.); Cambridge Naga Database photograph record C667.
- Function
- Chiefly used while crops are growing; no beliefs recorded
- Map confidence
- medium - Okotso village source locality not museum
- Source location
- C667 | PRM acc. 1928.69.320
- Forbidden to women
- Weather / fertility magic
- Toy / secular survival