Volume II Part 2 (2/2)
** J. A. I., xvi. 64.
Other affirmative evidence might be adduced. Mr. Ridley, who wrote primers in the Kamilaroi language as early as in 1856 (using Baiame for G.o.d), says: ”In every part of Australia where I have conversed with the aborigines, they have a traditional belief in one Supreme Creator,”
and he wonders, as he well may, at the statement to the contrary in the _Encyclopedia Britannica_, which rests solely on the authority, of Dr.
Lang, in Queensland. Of names for the Supreme Being, Mr. Ridley gives Baiame, Anamba; in Queensland, Mumbal (Thunder) and, at Twofold Bay, ”Dhu-rumbulum, which signifies, in the Namoi, a sacred staff, originally given by Baiame, and is used as the t.i.tle of Deity”.*
By ”staff” Mr. Ridley appears to indicate the Tundun, or bull-roarer.
This I venture to infer from Mr. Matthews' account of the Wiradthuri (New South Wales) with whom Dhuramoolan is an extinct bugbear, not answering to Tundun among the Kurnai, who is subordinate, as son, to Mungan-ngaur, and is a.s.sociated with the mystic bull-roarer, as is Gayandi, the voice of the Messenger of Baiame, among Mrs. Langloh Parker's informants.** In one tribe, Dara-mulun used to carry off and eat the initiated boys, till he was stopped and destroyed by Baiame.
This myth can hardly exist, one may suppose, among such tribes as consider Daramulun to preside over the mysteries.
* J. A. I., ii. (1872), 268, 270.
** Ibid., xxv. 298.
Living in contact with the Baiame-wors.h.i.+pping Kamilaroi, the Wiradthuri appear to make a jest of the power of Daramulun, who (we have learned) is said to have died, while his ”spirit” dwells on high.* Mr. Green way also finds Turramulan to be subordinate to Baiame, who ”sees all, and knows all, if not directly, through Turramulan, who presides at the Bora.... Turramulan is mediator in all the operations of Baiame upon man, and in all man's transactions with Baiame. Turramulan means ”leg on one side only,” ”one-legged”. Here the mediatorial aspect corroborates Mr. Manning's information.** I would suggest, _periculo meo_, that there may have been some syncretism, a Baiame-wors.h.i.+pping tribe adopting Daramulun as a subordinate and mediator; or Baiame may have ousted Daramulun, as Zeus did Cronos.
Mr. Ridley goes on to observe that about eighteen years ago (that is, in 1854) he asked intelligent blacks ”if they knew Baiame”. The answer was: ”Kamil zaia zummi Baiame, zaia winuzgulda,” ”I have not seen Baiame, I have heard or perceived him”. The same identical answer was given in 1872 ”by a man to whom I had never before spoken”. ”If asked who made the sky, the earth, the animals and man, they always answer 'Baiame'.”
Varieties of opinion as to a future life exist. All go to Baiame, or only the good (the bad dying eternally), or they change into birds!***
* J. A. I., xii. 194.
** Ibid., vii. 242.
*** Ibid., ii. 269.
Turning to North-west Central Queensland we find Dr. Roth (who knows the language and is partly initiated) giving Mul-ka-ri as ”a benevolent, omnipresent, supernatural being. Anything incomprehensible.” He offers a sentence: ”Mulkari tikkara ena” = ”Lord (who dwellest) among the sky”.
Again: ”Mulkari is the supernatural power who makes everything which the blacks cannot otherwise account for; he is a good, beneficent person, and never kills any one”. He initiates medicine men. His home is in the skies. He once lived on earth, and there was a culture-hero, inventing magic and spells. That Mulkari is an ancestral ghost as well as a beneficent Maker I deem unlikely, as no honours are paid to the dead.
”Not in any way to refer to the dead appears to be an universal rule among all these tribes.”* Mulkari has a malignant opposite or counterpart.
Nothing is said by Dr. Roth as to inculcation of these doctrines at the Mysteries, nor do Messrs. Spencer and Gillen allude to any such being in their accounts of Central Australian rites, if we except the ”self-existing” ”out of nothing” Ungambikula, sky-dwellers.
One rite ”is supposed to make the men who pa.s.s through it more kindly,”
we are not told why.** We have also an allusion to ”the great spirit Tw.a.n.girika,” whose voice (the women are told) is heard in the noise of the bull-roarer.***
* Roth, pp. 14, 36, 116, 153,158, 165.
** Spencer and Gillen, p. 369.
*** Ibid., p. 246.
”The belief is fundamentally the same as that found in all Australian tribes,” write the authors, in a note citing Tundun and Daramulun. But they do not tell us whether the Arunta belief includes the sanction, by Tw.a.n.girika, of morality. If it does not, have the Central Australians never developed the idea, or have they lost it? They have had quite as much experience of white men (or rather much more) than the believers in Baiame or Bunjil, ”before the white men came to Melbourne,” and, if one set of tribes borrowed ideas from whites, why did not the other?
The evidence here collected is not exhaustive. We might refer to Pirnmeheal, a good being, whom the blacks loved before they were taught by missionaries to fear him.*
* Dawson, The Australian Aborigines.
Mr. Dawson took all conceivable pains to get authentic information, and to ascertain whether the belief in Pirnmeheal was pre-European. He thinks it was original. The idea of ”G.o.d-borrowing” is repudiated by Manning, Gunther, Ridley, Green-way, Palmer, Mrs. Langloh Parker and others, speaking for trained observers and (in several cases) for linguists, studying the natives on the spot, since 1845. It is thought highly improbable by Mr. Hale (1840). It is rejected by Waitz-Gerland, speaking for studious science in Europe. Mr. Howitt, beginning with distrust, seems now to regard the beliefs described as of native origin.
On the other hand we have Mr. Mann, who has been cited, and the great authority of Mr. E. B. Tylor, who, however, has still to reply to the arguments in favour of the native origin of the beliefs which I have ventured to offer. Such arguments are the occurrence of Baiame before the arrival of missionaries; the secrecy, as regards Europeans, about ideas derived (Mr. Tylor thinks) from Europeans; the ignorance of the women on these heads; the notorious conservatism of the ”doctors”
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