The Bullroarer Atlas

SG1899-001 - ethnographic attestation

Arunta / Arrernte

Australia - MacDonnell Ranges - Alice Springs region - Central

Restricted

Eylmann 1908 Plate XXXI in full. Figures 4, 5, and 9 are West Arunta bullroarers, shown among the plate’s wider series of forms.
Eylmann 1908 Plate XXXI in full. Figures 4, 5, and 9 are West Arunta bullroarers, shown among the plate’s wider series of forms. Erhard Eylmann, Die Eingeborenen der Kolonie Südaustralien (1908), Plate XXXI Public domain Image source
Spencer & Gillen Fig. 20: wooden churinga or sacred sticks of the Urabunna, Luritja, and Arunta peoples.
Spencer & Gillen Fig. 20: wooden churinga or sacred sticks of the Urabunna, Luritja, and Arunta peoples. Spencer & Gillen, The Native Tribes of Central Australia (1899), Fig. 20 Public domain Image source

Churinga / Churinga irula English

Source term: Churinga or bull roarers

Churinga irula = "dressed wood" (Spencer & Gillen 1899:143), the small bored, hair-strung wooden churinga used as the bull-roarer proper. Namatwinna, a small love-charm churinga, from nama "grass" + twinjia "to strike," because it is first struck against the ground before being whirled (p. 541).

Etymology. Churinga implies something sacred or secret, naming both the object and the sacred quality it possesses. (high confidence)

Among the Arunta of the MacDonnell Ranges, the sacred objects called churinga could be seen by women or uninitiated men only on penalty of death, or of being blinded with a fire-stick. Spencer and Gillen, working in the Alice Springs district in the 1890s, described two kinds: flattened stones and wooden slabs, often incised, kept hidden in storehouses among the rocks. Each churinga was held to contain the spirit part of an ancestor of the Alcheringa, the far-off creation time; the ancestor's body died and a rock or tree rose to mark the place, but his spirit remained in the stone. The smaller wooden ones, bored at one end and strung with human hair or opossum-fur string, were the bull-roarers proper, called churinga irula, "dressed wood." One small type, the namatwinna, took its name from nama, grass, and twinna, to hit, because when whirled it was first made to strike the ground. When the sound rose around the ceremonial ground during a boy's initiation, the women were told it was the voice of the great spirit Twanyirika, come to carry the boy away.

Those that are bored in this way and are only a few inches in length are used as bull-roarers during certain ceremonies, the sound being produced by whirling them rapidly round with the string kept taut between the hand and the bull-roarer ... During the whole time the bull-roarers were sounding all round so loudly that they could easily be heard by the women and children in their camp, and by them it is supposed that the roaring is the voice of the great spirit Twanyirika, who has come to take the boy away.

Spencer & Gillen 1899, The Native Tribes of Central Australia, pp. 143, 246
Object
Sacred churinga include flattened stones and wooden slabs; smaller bored examples with hair or opossum string are used as bullroarers in ceremonies.
Function
Restricted sacred totemic objects; some are sound-making bullroarers used in ceremonies and tied to ancestor/spirit-person associations.
Map confidence
medium - Representative Alice Springs / MacDonnell Ranges Arunta anchor; chapter discusses several local totem centres
Source location
ch. V p. 128 (title + secrecy penalty); p. 143 (small bored wooden churinga whirled on human/opossum hair-string, = bull-roarer; "Churinga irula" glossed "dressed wood"); p. 246 (bull-roarer roar = voice of the spirit Twanyirika at circumcision); p. 541 (Namatwinna love-charm, from nama "grass" + twinjia "to strike"); figs. 20-21 (wooden and stone churinga plates) | Eylmann 1908 Plate XXXI figs. 4, 5, and 9

View source Open this point on the interactive map