The Bullroarer Atlas

SUBSAH-018 - secondary catalog

Mundang (Moundang)

Lere region, SW Chad - N Cameroon - Central Africa

Sacred / spirit

An African bullroarer, a dark wood blade with cord coiled and knotted near one end.
Representative — not this record’s object. · An African bullroarer, a dark wood blade with cord coiled and knotted near one end. Image source

ban-mafali / Mafalli / Falliku / Mafalli-serre

Moundang name of the clan de la Rhombe (bullroarer clan), a totemic founding lineage of the Lere kingdom; a clan/emblem name, not a physical bullroarer.

Etymology. The Moundang name of the clan de la Rhombe, the bullroarer clan, one of the founding lineages settled at Léré. The recurring ban- in the parallel names ban-se (Buffalo), ban-ju (Birds) and ban-bale (Lions) reads as "clan of X," though the source does not separately gloss mafali. (medium confidence)

After a Mundang king's death, older men sounded three bullroarer registers during circumcision: iron Mafalli, notched wooden Falliku, and sorghum-stem Mafalli-serre. The instrument also entered the kingdom's social body as ban-mafali, the bullroarer clan, named beside the Buffalo, Bird, and Lion lineages already at Lere when the king Damba came. Almost everywhere else the bullroarer speaks for a clan; here, uniquely, it names one.

Object
Mundang bullroarers in three registers: iron Mafalli, notched wooden Falliku, and sorghum-stem Mafalli-serre, swung by elders; ban-mafali also names the bullroarer clan among Lere's founding lineages.
Function
Older men swung the three forms during circumcision after a king's death; the bullroarer also endures as the emblem-name of a founding clan.
Map confidence
medium - approximate territory centroid (mining 2026)
Source location
Adler 1982 | Frobenius 1925:79–81

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