The Bullroarer Atlas

NGUINEA-010 - museum specimen

Namau (Purari Delta), Baroi River

Papua New Guinea - Gulf Province - Purari Delta - Naman District - Baroi River - Ukiaravi - Oceania - Sahul

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A dark wooden blade painted with fine white featherlike striping near its pierced, corded end — shown for the general Gulf of Papua form, not...
Representative image. A dark wooden blade painted with fine white featherlike striping near its pierced, corded end — shown for the general Gulf of Papua form, not the cluster of ravi-named bull-roarers recorded along the Baroi River at Ukiaravi. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Crosby Brown Collection (acc. 09.163.3) CC0 Image source

Imunu Viki English

Source term: Bullroarer

"Crying imunu" — the cry of the imunu, the spirit.

Etymology. Imunu viki means 'crying imunu' — the crying spirit: imunu is the Purari Delta word for the pervasive spirit-beings of the delta, and the bullroarer's whir was heard as an imunu crying, at the funerals of prominent men and in the men's-house rites where it gave voice to the kaiaimunu effigies. The instrument's name thus contains the spirit category itself. (high confidence)

Among the Namau of the Purari Delta, this bullroarer was the voice of a spirit. Its Namau name, recorded at Cambridge as Imunu Viki, "crying imunu," names the cry of the imunu itself — sounded at the funerals of prominent men, where the whir stood for a spirit lamenting the dead, and at the initiation of boys, where it was the voice of the kaiaimunu, the great wickerwork monster kept in the men's house. It was known only to initiated men. Alfred Cort Haddon collected it on the Baroi River at Ukiaravi, at a ravi (a men's ceremonial house) named for a man called Omai, and it entered the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology at Cambridge in 1916.

Imunu Viki ("crying imunu")

Cambridge MAA, accession E 1916.143.179, local-term field
Object
Cambridge MAA E 1916.143.179 and companion accessions E 1916.143.186-189, a cluster of Baroi River/Ukiaravi bullroarers with local ravi names.
Function
Sounded as the voice of the imunu (spirit): at the funerals of prominent men, where the whir was the spirit's cry over the dead, and at male initiation, where it gave voice to the kaiaimunu kept in the men's house; known only to initiated men.
Map confidence
medium - Representative Baroi River / Purari Delta / Naman District anchor; Ukiaravi exact coordinate not independently locked.
Source location
MAA E 1916.143.179; companion E 1916.143.186-189

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