Kairu (Koriki) "imunu-viki" bullroarer, Purari Delta

Imunu-viki

"crying imunu" — a weeping spirit; imunu is the Purari word for the spirit category to which bullroarers belong

Etymology. Imunu-viki, 'crying imunu,' names the bullroarer as a weeping spirit: imunu is the Purari word for the spirit-beings that pervade the delta. The whir of these instruments was heard as the crying of the spirits themselves.

This bullroarer, collected by A. C. Haddon, was one of forty-four lying beneath a kopiravi — a basketwork spirit-monster — in the men's house at Kairu, a Koriki village in the Purari Delta. Each kopiravi had its own name and its own keeper; none was ever taken out of the house, and no woman was ever allowed to see one. When a raid brought home victims, their bodies were thrust inside the kopiravi overnight; next morning they were cut up with bull-roarers, cooked and eaten. Each monster was a kai-ia-imunu, a sky spirit; the roarers beneath were imunu-viki, crying ones.

On peering over the screen into the gloomy “holy of holies” (maivaki) is to be seen a double row, up to ten or a dozen, of large, hollow, basketwork monsters, (kopiravi), with wide gaping jaws and four wooden legs … Bull-roarers are laid beneath some of them.

A. C. Haddon, 'The Kopiravi Cult of the Namau, Papua', Man 19 (1919), no. 91, p. 178

Particulars

Object

A bullroarer from Kairu in the Purari Delta, Naman District (Cambridge MAA E 1916.143.232).

Function

Kept with forty-three others beneath a kopiravi in the men's house, where no woman might see it.