The Bullroarer Atlas

SASIA-002 - ethnographic attestation

Malabar

India - Malabar - Kerala - South Asia

Play / practical

A dark wood blade with deep saw-tooth notches cut along both edges and a tuft of cord at its tip — a Naga type from the Pitt Rivers...
Representative image. A dark wood blade with deep saw-tooth notches cut along both edges and a tuft of cord at its tip — a Naga type from the Pitt Rivers collections, not the bamboo toy bull-roarer recorded from Malabar. © Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford (acc. 1953.10.100) Image source

Source term: child's toy bull-roarer

A child's plaything from the Malabar coast: a bull-roarer cut from bamboo, presented to the Pitt Rivers Museum in 1919 by V. K. Raman Menon among a miscellany of curiosities. The annual report records only the bare object and its broad region, with no note of who made it or how it was swung.

Child's toy "bull-roarer" of bamboo, Malabar. Presented by V. K. Raman Menon.

Pitt Rivers Museum, Annual Report 1919, Accessions by Donation
Object
PRM 1919.7.1: a Malabar child's bullroarer made from split bamboo, 177 x 18 mm, with terminal binding and loop.
Function
Child toy bullroarer from Malabar presented by V.K. Raman Menon
Map confidence
medium_high - Kozhikode/Malabar regional anchor not Oxford
Source location
1919 annual report; PRM 1919.7.1

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