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V-The Bull-Roarer in India.

By Rai Bahadur Sarat Chandra Roy, M.A., B.L., M.L.C.

Dr. A. C. Haddon, in his Study of Man, calls the Bull-roarer "the most ancient, widely-spread and sacred religious symbol of the world." As India is the home of numerous comparatively primitive tribes, traces of the primitive uses of the bull-roarer may still be reasonably expected to exist in parts of this country. But, unfortunately no survey appears to have yet been made of the different forms of "bull-roarers" that may still be found in India, and the uses to which they are now put as well as the purposes that they at one time subserved. Nor is the present paper intended to supply the want of such a survey. My humble object in this paper is to draw the attention of students of Ethnology in India to the need for vigilant and careful search in different parts of India for evidence as to the present and past uses of the instrument. Such search may perchance reward some fortunate student with the discovery of survivals or vestiges of the religious or magical uses of the bull-roarer similar to those found in parts of savage Australia, New Zealand, New Guinea, Africa, America and Melanesia, the only countries in which so far the magical and religious uses of the bull-roarer hav been observed.

The prebistoric antiquity of the bull-roaier as a sacred object is inferred from the fact that two or three b l-roarers made of bone and decorated with incised concentric circles, such as are found in some Northern and Central Australian bull-roarers, have been discovered in certain palæolithic sites in Europe. And its undoubted ancient use in the historic period as an object of religious veneration or magico-religious significance is proved by its employment in connection with the Dionysian mysteries in ancient Greecc.

The bull-roarer, as all students of Ethnology are aware, is merely a thin slat of wood or bamboo, which is tied to a string and, when swung round, produces at first a low humming sound which soon rises to a muffled windy roaring noise. The size of the slat varies from 8 to 9 inches in length and from 1 to 3 inches in breadth, and the shape is either oblong or oval. There is generally, but not always, a hole at one end for the insertion of the string.

It is among some of the Australian tribes that the mystical and magical uses of the instrument are still found in full vigour. I need not describe those uses in detail as they are familiar to all students of Ethnology. The main features of the ceremonial uses of the bull-roarer in Australia are that they are connected with the secret ceremonies of the men, such as initiation and circumcision, and their mysteries are carefully guarded from women and children among whom a belief is inculcated that the sound is the voice of a supernatural being connected with the ceremonies from whom they must keep at a distance. When not required for ceremonial use, the bull-roarers are stowed away in men's cl..b-houses which no woman may enter.

In India, as I said, no regular investigation appears to have yet been made as to the present or past existence and uses of the bull-roarer. There is only one bull-roarer in the Indian Museum; and this, as the register of the Museum shows, was brought from the Chittagong district. The exact place of find is not recorded nor the use made of it. No specimen of a bull-roarer is to be seen in the Madras Museum or the Prince of Wales' Museum at Bombay or the Lucknow Museum or any other provincial or state museum in India, so far as I know, except one or two presented by me to the Patna Museum.

In my own enquiries among the aboriginal tribes of Chōṭā Nagpur and Bihār and Orissā I have so far met with the bullroarer only among four tribes, namely the Hos of the Singhbhum district, the Santals in the Singhbhum an Monghyr districts

1 Its registered number is 11007 and it is; kept in a glass-case for musical instrumenta.

and the Mundas and the Oraons of the Ranchi district (Fig. 1). The Oraon bull-roarer, like most other bull-roarers described by ethnological writers, has a hole at one end for the insertion of a string, but a Santal bull-roarer that I found in a village near Chakai in the Monghyr district in Bihar is not perforated but notched to form a neck with two shoulders for tying the string on. Muṇḍa boys use bull-roarers of both varieties, notched as well as perforated. The Chittagong specimen in the Indian Museum is also notched only partially, having one shoulder only, and is not perforated.

As for the Muṇḍās, Hōs and Santals, the use of the bull-roarer amongst them is now only sporadic occurring only in a few villages, and that too merely as a children's toy, as in the British Isles, Central Europe, Sumatra, the Malay Peninsula and in some other parts of the world. Among the Chōṭā Nagpur tribes I have met with no traces of the use of the bull-roarer in putting cattle to flight by its noise, as the name "bull-roarer" primarily signifies, nor do the Chōṭā Nagpur aboriginals use it as a hunting charm, as the Bushman do, to draw game. The uses of the Chittagong bull-roarer, as I have said, are not recorded. The three Indian bull-roarers-Mūṇḍā, Santal and Hō-which are used 88 children's toys, are provided with wooden or bamboo handles like the handle of a horsewhip. And as the Chittagong specimen is also provided with a similar handle, it may perhaps, be presumed that the bull-roarer is now used as a children's toy in the Chittagong district.

It is only in some Oraon villages in the central plateau of the Ranchi district that I have found some traces or vestiges of the former ceremonial or magical use of the bull-roarer. At the present day, even the Oraons themselves have forgotten the extact ceremonial uses made of the bull-roarer by their ancestors. But in some of the dhūmkūrias or dormitories and clubhouses of Oraon bachelors, may be seen hundreds of thin slats of bamboo perforated at one end and strung together and hanging in rows from the beams (Fig. 2). The Oraons now call these bull-roarers that are kept in their dhumkurias by the name

of khed-khukris or foot-scrapers and, when I asked the inmates of these dormitories and other Oraons of the villages what they were meant for, the only information they could give me was that they were scrapers with which the younger boys scrape the soles of the elder boys' feet to remove dried up bits of scarf skin. And that is how I described this instrument in my monograph on the Oraons of Chōṭā Nagpur (p. 244) published in 1915. In some Orāon dhūmkūrias, valves of the seed-pod of the semar (Bombax malabaricum) tree, perforated at one end, are used for the purpose instead of slats of wood or bamboo. When whirled round, these bull-roarers made of semar-pods produce the same roaring noise as other bull-roarers. But these semar-pod bull-roarers can by no means serve the purpose of foot-scrapers. Nor are they known to be ever used as children's toys. If twirled about for any length of time, the dry valves get cracked and unfit for use. So their only object would appear to have been a ceremonial one.

From later inquiries I learnt that the actual instruments used as foot-scrapers in some Oraon dormitories were similar but broader slats of wood most of which had no perforations to pass a string through, and in one dormitory I found such scrapers kept in a small basket over a beam of the building, and they are not much thought of, whereas the strings of thin slats of bamboo hanging from the beams are carefully preserved. As for these rows of small bamboo slats suspended in rows from the beams of the Oraon bachelors' dormitories, my attention was first drawn to the identity of these objects with bullroarers by my esteemed friend Mr. J. P. Mills, 1.c.s., author of the interesting monographs on the Lhota Nāgās and the Ao Nāgās, whom I took to see one or two of these Oraon bachelors' dormitories in the Ranchi district. Dr. J. H. Hutton informs me that the original nature and use of similar slats of wood hung up in rows in Nāgā changs or dormitories in Assam was also not perceived until recently when Mr. Henry Balfour visited them and pointed out that these slats were in reality bull-roarere. By the courtesy of my esteemed friend

Dr. Hutton I have now secured specimens of different forms of the ball-roarer in use in Assam. These are shown in Figure 7.

Once my attention was drawn to it, I saw that the identity was unmistakable, and I wondered how it had been overlooked not only by myself but by so ne other anthropologists, European and Indian, whom I had shown these objects. Later I found out that the use of similar slats of wood or bamboo as children's toys, too, was not altogether unknown to the Oraon, though rather rare. When used as a toy, the Oraon calls the bullroarer by the name of Bhurka, the Mūṇḍa calls it by the onomatopoetic name of Hui-hui and the Ho calls it Biur-biur.

Although the Oraons have now practically forgotten the magical and religious uses of the bull-roarer, its intimate connection with their bachelors' dormitories and men's clubhouses known as dhumkuriās and its apparently decorative but actually ceremonial use at the periodical dancing festivals of the Oraon youth at the village akhra which adjoins and practically forms part of the dhūmkūriā, appear to point unmistakably to the former magical and religious uses made of the instrument. These uses, of which vestiges still linger, would appear to have been more or less analogous to the purposes which the bull-roarer still subserves among the Australian Blacks and some other tribes.

The young Oraon inmates of the dhumkuriā club-houses have still to go through certain initiation ceremonies, but many of the ancient rites and ceremonies connected therewith appear to have fallen into disuse and the rites and ceremonies in which these bull-roarers might have been employed would appear to be among them. In Australian initiation ceremonies, the use of the bull-roarer and the practice of daubing the bodies of men with clay are associated together. In certain secret ceremonies and dancing festivals, the Orãon initiates, too, bedaub their bodies with a kind of whitish clay (Fig. 3), but the bullroarer does not now play the same rôle in these Oraon oere nonies and festivals as it does in Australia.

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