Blade in the yellow snake's mouth

buliuana; kadanga

Source term: Buliuana; Kadanga; Schwirrhölzer (kleine und große)

buliuana: the large bullroarer, and the name of the brothers' father (Südkamp p. 99). kadanga: the bullroarer paired with buliuana; the two are given as 'small and large bullroarers' (p. 259). Banaka: a yellow venomous snake and one of the four Nyikina section names. Wolowolang (also Kundur): the circumcision ceremony; 'Wolowolang, buliana and kadanga belong together.' Ingurug: the Rainbow Serpent. pindan: low scrub country.

Two brothers, Yalgi and Windinbigi, came out of a spring in Mangala country and walked the land giving every creature its secret name. Their father was Buliuana, and buliuana is also the Nyikina word for the great bullroarer; the brothers carried these blades and handed them out to make each being big and strong. In the low pindan scrub they caught a yellow snake, the Banaka, and put a buliuana into its mouth to make it strong and poisonous. Only men of the Banaka section can kill it safely; anyone else is bitten. The eagle-hawk got a blade to mend its nest, the weeping bees one to stop their honey leaking. Trapped by a bushfire, Windinbigi gave blades to a small cloud, and rain, lightning and thunder followed. One being got nothing: a red sandhill was the camp of Ingurug, the Rainbow Serpent, and the brothers were too frightened. In another telling they carried buliuana and kadanga with circumcision to the neighbouring peoples, and made the law that women must never see them.

Sie steckten der Banaka ein Buliuana ins Maul, um sie stark und giftig zu machen.

They put a buliuana into the Banaka's mouth, to make it strong and poisonous.

Helmut Petri 1954, as reproduced in Horst Südkamp, Wondjina: Der göttliche Tiermensch, p. 254

Particulars

Object

Bullroarers called buliuana and kadanga, carried and given away by the ancestral brothers Yalgi and Windinbigi; their form is not described.

Function

In Nyikina myth the brothers Yalgi and Windinbigi give buliuana to the creatures they name, to make them big and strong: one put into the mouth of the yellow Banaka snake makes it strong and venomous; others mend a hawk's nest and a leaking bees' nest, ring a hole against a bushfire's heat, and go with a cloud that brings rain, lightning and thunder. In a second telling the brothers carry buliuana and kadanga with the Wolowolang circumcision rite to neighbouring peoples and make the law that women may not see bullroarers.