SAMER-005 - museum specimen
Bororo rhombe from Kejara, collected by Lévi-Strauss
Brazil - Mato Grosso - Rio Vermelho - Aldeia Kejara - South America
Restricted
aige English
Source term: Rhombe
aige — the Bororo bullroarer, sharing its name with a mythical water-beast; written aidye / aíge in older sources.
A large Bororo rhombe covered with naturally fluorescent pigments, collected in 1936 by Claude and Dina Lévi-Strauss at Kejara, the Bororo village on the Rio Vermelho in Mato Grosso later described in Tristes Tropiques. The Bororo call the bullroarer aige, which is also the name of a mythical animal likened to a hippopotamus; among the Eastern Bororo of the S. Lourenço and Rio Vermelho the lanceolate boards are swung at funeral rites, where they sound the voice of the dead and where a man smeared head to foot in clay crawls on all fours as the aige. Women are barred from the rite: as soon as the buzzing begins they flee into the forest or hide in the houses, and the old accounts hold that a woman who saw the instrument would die. When the Bororo gave Lévi-Strauss this one, they told him to hide it at the bottom of his locked trunk, out of the women's sight. Even in Paris the aige kept its rules: the record of its companion piece from the same collection registers the funeral ceremonies and the ban on the eyes of women and uninitiated children — and adds that, the object being magical, little technical information could be obtained at all.
le rhombe, de taille importante et couvert de pigments naturellement fluorescents, représente la voix d'un animal mythique
the rhombe, of considerable size and covered with naturally fluorescent pigments, represents the voice of a mythical animal
Les Réveillées (EHESS), "Le rhombe," on the Bororo rhombe collected by Lévi-Strauss (1936)
- Object
- Quai Branly object 133755 / inventory 71.1936.48.2, a rhombe from Aldeia Kejara on the Rio Vermelho, Mato Grosso. A companion aíje from the same collection, 71.1936.48.3 (record 278851), is a painted blade 66 cm long: alternating red urucu and black charcoal paint, rows of white ash circles (kigaduréu) stamped on the black zones, the fine cord still at its pointed head.
- Function
- Swung at Bororo funeral rites, where the aige boards voice the dead and a clay-smeared man crawls as the aige itself; at the first buzz women flee to the forest or hide, and the old accounts hold that a woman who saw it would die (von den Steinen 1894; Colbacchini 1942).
- Map confidence
- medium - Representative Eastern Bororo anchor on the Rio Vermelho, Mato Grosso (Sao Lourenco drainage); the exact site of Kejara village is not separately fixed.
- Source location
Page references
Quai Branly object 133755 / inventory 71.1936.48.2
- Spirit voice
- Forbidden to women