SUBSAH-018 - secondary catalog
Mundang (Moundang)
Lere region, SW Chad - N Cameroon - Central Africa
Sacred / spirit
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
- Spirit voice
- Initiation rite
- Death and rebirth