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28. Three Bambu Trumpets from Northern Territory, South Australia.
Author(s): Henry Balfour
Source: Man, Vol. 1 (1901), pp. 33-34
Published by: Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland
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1901.] MAN. [Nos. 27 28.
ORIGINAL ARTICLES.
Australia. With Plate O, 1-2. Balfour.
A Swan-7ieck Boomerang of unusual form. Communicated by Henry Balfour,
M.A., Curator of the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford. 27
I am anxious to draw attention to the implement shown in Plate C, fig. 1, in order
that I may ascertain whether any similar boomerang exists in other museums or collec
tions. The specimen is in the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford, having formerly been in Mr.
Norman Hardy’s collection. Instead of being cut out of a single piece of wood specially
selected for the purpose, as is the case with the swan-necked boomerang as usually seen
(one of which is figured for comparison, Plate C, fig. 2), this example has been apparently
made from an ordinary boomerang having but slight curvature, and the spur at the end
is formed by fixing with gum a flat piece of wood to the boomerang head. The spur
is painted in red and white patterns, and the boomerang is coated with red ochre. The
spur is protected with a sheath of melaleuca bark. The hook-like spur is 6^ inches
long. This specimen was procured from natives of MacArthur River, Gulf of Carpentaria,
N.T., S. Australia. I should be curious to ascertain whether others of similar construction
have been recorded, and also whether this example is to be regarded as intended for
ceremonial use ; the painting seems to suggest this. The specimen of ordinary type
figured with it is from the tableland between the Roper and MacArthur Rivers. H. B.
Australia. With Plate O, 3-5. Balfour.
Three Bambú Trumpets from Northern Territory.^ South Australia. Commu
nicated by Henry Balfour, M.A., Curator of the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford. 28
I have recently been able to secure for the Pitt Rivers Museum at Oxford three
examples of the trumpets made by natives of Northern Territory, South Australia, in the
region between Ports Essington and Darwin (Plate C, 3-5). Though characteristic of
this particular region, comparatively few of these instruments have found their way into
museums. They are of interest as being of very limited range, and as being wind
instruments of music, a class which is very poorly represented among native Australians.
Wooden tubes, ilpirra^ hollowed out by white ants, were obtained by the members of the
Horn Expedition in Central Australia. These were used for singing through, and not
for blowing as trumpets (Spencer and Gillen, p. 607). W. E. Roth mentions emu
calls consisting of hollow logs, 2| to 3 feet long, which are blown into to produce a
sound, as being used throughout North-West Central Queensland (Ethnological Studies,
p. 97). Unless one includes the a bull-roarers
as wind instruments, as one should do.
I do not recall any other wind musical instruments in Australia excepting the bambú
trumpets of the Northern Territory. Coppinger Voyage of the ‘ Alert,’ ” 1883, p. 204)
saw in a camp of the Larikia tribe. Port Darwin, a
pieces of hollow reed about 4 feet
“ long, which they blew like cow-horns.” R. Etheridge describes and figures
(“ Macleay Memorial Volume,” 1893, Linn. Soc. N.S.W.) three bambú trumpets
obtained by Mr. H. Stockdale from the Alligator tribe. Port Essingtoii, varying from
3 feet to 3 feet 3 inches in length, and from quite straight to strongly curved. All are
engraved on the surface. J. E. Partington figures Album of the Pacific,” I. ser.,
353, fig. i.) a straight example from Port Essington, called ebero^ which is in the British
Museum ; also (III. ser., pl. 136, figs. 2 and 3) a specimen (37 inches) from the Gulf of
Carpentaria, oolomba., blown like a bullock horn,” and one from Western Queensland
(8 feet 6 inches), of which it is said, “ the performer sings into one end.” Both these
instruments are in the Adelaide Museum. Of the Specimens which are figured here
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10Ô1.] MAN. [Nos. 28-2Ô.
(Plate C), number 1 is of small size (31J inches), very slightly curved, reddened all
over, and scratched and dotted over the surface. Number 2 is of large size (3 feet
10^ inches across the curve), is strongly curved, and tapers somewhat from end to end.
The surface is scraped, reddened, and finely engraved in places, figures of the dugong
and turtle being discernible ; black gum has been smeared on the larger end. The native
name is given as mam-ma-lie. Both these were procured by Mr. J. V. Parkes, Inspector
of Mines, in 1891, near Port Essington, and were in the collection of Mr. Norman
Hardy recently presented to the Pitt Rivers Museum by Mr. R. F. Wilkins.
The third specimen (No. 3) is nearly straight, 4 feet 3^ inches long, tapering
slightly. The silicious cortex is scraped away in bands at the nodes, the intervening
spaces being roughly engraved in zig-zags. The lower end has been coated with
blackboy ” gum. I purchased this specimen from an English dealer, and it probably
comes from the Port Essington district.
In all the specimens the ends are cut off square, and the nodes have been broken
through, so that the instruments are merely plain tube-trumpets. H. B.
India : Madras. Fawcett.
Notes on the Dombs of Jeypui\ Vizagapatam District^ Madras Presidency, ftrt
Communicated by F. Fawcett, Local Correspondent of the Anthropological
Institute.
The Dombs are an outcast jungle people, who inhabit the forests on the high lands
fifty to eighty or one hundred miles from the east coast of India, about Vizagapatam.
Being outcast, they are never allowed to live within a village, but have their own little
hamlet adjoining a village proper, inhabited by people of various superior castes.
It is fairly safe to say that the Dombs are akin to the Panos of the adjoining
Khond country, a pariah folk who live amongst the Khonds, and used to supply the
human victims for the Mêriah sacrifices. Indeed the Khonds, who hold them in con
temptuous inferiority, call them Dombos as a sort of alternative title to Panos. The
Paidis of the adjoining Savara or Saora country are also, doubtless, kinsmen of the
Dombs.
In most respects their condition is a very poor one. Though they live in the best
part of the Presidency for game, they know absolutely nothing of hunting, and
cannot even handle a bow and arrow. They have, however, one respectable quality,
industry, and are the weavers, traders, and money-lenders of the hills, being very
useful as middlemen between the Khonds, Savras, Gadaben, and other hill-people, on
the one hand, and the traders of the plains on the other. I am informed, on good
authority, that there are some Dombs who rise higher than this, but cannot say whether
these are, or are not, crosses with superior races. Most likely they are ; for most of the
Dombs are arrant thieves.
It was this propensity for thieving, in fact, which had landed some hundreds of
them in the jail at Vizagapatam when I visited that place lately, and gave me the
opportunity of recording their measurements, and of making some notes of their
customs ; and these measurements and notes I now submit for what they may be
worth, as bearing on the Dravidian problem of Southern and Central India.
Tribal Divisions,—With one exception, all the individuals in the tabular list given
below, are Paidi Dombs. The one exception is No. 22 in my notes, who is an Augnia
Domb. Between Augnia and Paidi Dombs there is no intermarriage, and the Augnia
are reckoned inferior because they eat frogs.” Both, on the other hand, eat beef.
which, it is hardly necessary to say, is eaten in Southern India by none but those on the
lowest step of the social ladder. No doubt there are other tribes of Dombs also besides
[ 34 ]
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