SCHEBESTA1933-002 - primary ethnography
Balese (Kalimoholo) pahudjuhudju bullroarer
Democratic Republic of the Congo - Kilo-Geti goldfields district - Ituri Forest, Belgian Congo - Central Africa
Restricted
pahudjuhudju German
Source term: Schwirrholz
pahudjuhudju: the Kalimoholo Balese/Efe name for the initiation bullroarer; Schebesta guesses it may mean "father hudju" (hudju = grandfather, the initiation leader's assumed role while swinging it), but treats this as speculative.
When a Balese wife bit her husband, the pahudjuhudju itself would start to hum in the night: she knew at once whose disobedience the sound named, and she owed her clan a gift in atonement. At Kalimoholo it took an evening of blunt questions and promised presents before the two Abitiri would stage panda, the secret initiation, for Paul Schebesta — fur caps, painted faces, green branches, a windbreak hut in the tall grass. There he learned what swung inside it. The bullroarer belonged to Tore, the god who had handed it down to the ancestors; the disguised elder, playing 'grandfather,' swung it as Tore's own voice, and the initiation boys who lived on alone in the forest were reckoned Tore's messengers, owed food wherever they hung a green branch on a hut. The novices called that elder hudju, grandfather, and Schebesta guessed the instrument's own name meant something like 'father hudju' — the roar of the god and of the ancestor in one object. He never laid eyes on the thing itself — only on everything it commanded.
Das Schwirrholz ist die Stimme Tores.
The bullroarer is the voice of Tore.
Schebesta 1933:134
- Object
- Not seen by Schebesta, either at Kalimoholo or an earlier Banyari village; explicitly identified and named as the bullroarer swung during initiation. Do not infer blade material, dimensions, or cord construction.
- Function
- Swung by the disguised initiation leader (abitiri, playing "grandfather") during the Balese panda initiation at Kalimoholo; called the voice of the high god Tore, who gave the instrument to the ancestors; also reported to sound at night to name a wife's disobedience toward her husband.
- Map confidence
- medium - Anchored on Mongbwalu (historic Kilo-Moto goldfields town, of which Kilo is a named neighbour) as a district-level anchor for the Kilo-Geti area where Schebesta places Kalimoholo among named Balese and Banyari villages; not the village itself, which is not identifiable on modern gazetteers.
- Source location
Page references
printed pp. 132–134; PDF pp. 140–142
- Spirit voice
- Initiation rite
- Forbidden to women