SCHEBESTA1954-001 - ethnographic attestation
Jahai pusign, hushed by thunder
Malaysia - Upper Perak (Temengor and the Teladn) and the Kelantan interior - Southeast Asia - Malay Peninsula
Play / practical
pusign
Source term: Schwirrholz
pusign: the Jahai name for the boys' bullroarer. Karei: the Semang thunder being.
Loudness is frowned on among the Semang. Once, when children in a Jahai camp on the Teladn were romping noisily at play, a woman's voice stopped them at once: if you play like that, Karei will soon strike. Karei is the thunder. Jahai boys liked to whirl the pusign, a leaf-thin board 27 centimetres long, round their heads on a cord until it whirred and hummed. It was only a toy. But when the boys got too loud with it, the adults hushed them the same way, with a word about Karei.
Dieses Schwirrholz ist nur ein Kinderspielzeug. Treiben es die Kinder gelegentlich einmal damit zu laut, dann bringen sie die Erwachsenen mit Hinweis auf Karei zum Schweigen.
This bullroarer is only a children's toy. If the children now and then get too loud with it, the adults silence them with a reference to Karei.
Schebesta, Die Negrito Asiens II/1 (1954), p. 189
- Object
- Leaf-thin little board, 27 cm long, with a cord tied at one end; whirled round the head.
- Function
- Boys' toy, whirled round the head to whirr and hum; when the play got too loud, adults hushed the boys by invoking the thunder being Karei.
- Source
- Paul Schebesta, Die Negrito Asiens, vol. II, part 1: Wirtschaft und Soziologie (Studia Instituti Anthropos 12; Wien-Mödling: St.-Gabriel-Verlag, 1954), pp. 188-189
- Source location
- pp. 188-189
- Source confidence
- high
- Location note
- Jahai country in upper Perak near Temengor and Banun, where Schebesta's Jahai camps (including the Teladn) lay; group anchor, no camp is named for the pusign.
Regions: Southeast Asia
- Toy / secular survival