SASIA-009 - secondary catalog
Sinhalese
Sri Lanka - Ceylon (Colombo, Anuradhapura) - South Asia
Play / practical
runa
runa — the Sinhalese children's name Seligmann recorded at Colombo; he gives no further meaning.
At Colombo a troop of boys whirling thin slats of wood overhead followed the Perahera, the procession of the great Buddhist festival held each year about the end of May. The anthropologist C. G. Seligmann learned of the toy from A. Haly, director of the Colombo Museum, then saw the children at it himself and procured specimens at Cotta, a village three miles from the city. Each was a roughly quadrilateral slab of wood, untapered, about 137 by 40 millimetres, holed near one end and knotted to a string tied to a short stiff stick; rather than being swung in continuous circles as in New Guinea, it was waved to and fro above the head to raise a whirring noise. The children called it runa. At Kandy the boys cracked whips in its place, and Seligmann found the Tamil children did not use it; neater specimens, made of bamboo, he saw played with at Anuradhapura, a hundred and fifty miles from Colombo.
I was informed that at Colombo a troop of boys whirling these toys, called runa, followed the Perahera procession (a ceremony in the great Buddhist festival held annually about the end of May). This is not done at Kandy, their place being taken by boys' cracking whips.
C. G. Seligmann, "The Bull-Roarer in Ceylon," Folklore 11 (1900): 456
- Object
- Roughly quadrilateral wood slat (~137x40mm; also neater bamboo specimens), holed at one end on a string, waved overhead to make a whirring noise.
- Function
- A children's toy, whirled at play and by troops of boys following the Perahera procession at Colombo.
- Map confidence
- high - approximate territory centroid (mining 2026)
- Source location
- p. 478
- Toy / secular survival