A brief note is all that these inquirers give in their copious book to
the great spirit. 'This belief,' they say, 'is fundamentally the same
as that found in all Australian tribes.' Now in the tribes reported
on by Mr. Howitt, the spirit whose voice is the sound of the slat or
bull roarer called the _tundun_, and by other names, is the son or
other deputy of Baiame, or some such powerful good being, Mungan-ngaur,
Pirnmeheal, Bunjil, Noorele, or by whatever style he may be called. One
of his duties is to superintend the Bora, or mysteries of the tribes.
The Wiraijuri believe that their type of Twanyirika was destroyed,
for misconduct, by his superior, Baiame. This sinful great spirit was
called Daramulun, but in other tribes Daramulun is apparently the
superior, and goes on existing. He is, says Mr. Howitt, 'the Great
Master,' 'the Father,' the sky dweller, the institutor of society, the
power whose voice 'calls to the rain to fall and make the grass green.'
He is the moral being for whom 'the boys are made so that Daramulun
likes them'--a process involving cries of _nga_ ('good'), so says Mr.
Howitt. His attributes and powers (where he is supreme) 'are precisely
those of Baiame,' who, by Mr. Ridley and many others, is spoken of as
a maker, if I may not say creator. It was in 1854, two years before
publishing his 'Gurre Kamilaroi' (in which 'Baiame' was used for
'God'), that Mr. Ridley asked a Kamilaroi man, 'Do you know Baiame?'
He said, _Kamil zaia zummi Baiame, zaia winuzgulda_ ('I have not seen
Baiame; I have heard, or perceived him. They hear him in the thunder').
Among this tribe Daramulun was not the superior; he was 'author of
disease and medical skill, of mischief and wisdom also; he appears in
the form of a serpent at their assemblies,' like Asclepius and the
American Hobamok.[47] Though Mr. Ridley is a missionary, I venture to
cite him, because his evidence goes back nearly fifty years, to a time
when the blacks had less contact with Europeans. Moreover, Mr. Ridley
is corroborated by Mr. Howitt and other laymen, while Mr. Frazer even
prefers the evidence of a German missionary to that of Mr. Gason, a
lay Englishman of the greatest experience. Mr. Howitt finds, among the
Kurnai, Tundun as the patron of the mysteries and the bull roarer, like
Twanyirika. In Mr. Manning's tribe[48] the same _rôle_ is taken by
Moodgeegally, under the control of Boyma.
We have thus five or six parallels to the Twanyirika of the godless
Arunta, and all are subordinate to a higher power. If then, as Messrs.
Spencer and Gillen tell us, the belief in the Arunta Twanyirika, the
great spirit, 'is fundamentally the same as that found in all the
Australian tribes,' Twanyirika ought to have a much more powerful
benevolent superior. In that case the Arunta would
Incline to think there is a god,
Or something very like one,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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