Tjurunga
Encyclopedia
- Churinga and Tjuringa redirect here. For the mothMothA moth is an insect closely related to the butterfly, both being of the order Lepidoptera. Moths form the majority of this order; there are thought to be 150,000 to 250,000 different species of moth , with thousands of species yet to be described...
genusGenusIn biology, a genus is a low-level taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms, which is an example of definition by genus and differentia...
, see Churinga (moth)Churinga (moth)Churinga is a genus of moths in the Arctiidae family.-References:* *...
.
A Tjurunga or as it sometimes spelled, Churinga, is an object of religious significance by Central Australia
Central Australia
Central Australia/Alice Springs Region is one of the five regions in the Northern Territory. The term Central Australia is used to describe an area centred on Alice Springs in Australia. It is sometimes referred to as Centralia; likewise the people of the area are sometimes called Centralians...
n Indigenous Australian
Indigenous Australians
Indigenous Australians are the original inhabitants of the Australian continent and nearby islands. The Aboriginal Indigenous Australians migrated from the Indian continent around 75,000 to 100,000 years ago....
people of the Arrernte
Arrernte people
The Arrernte people , known in English as the Aranda or Arunta, are those Indigenous Australians who are the original custodians of Arrernte lands in the central area of Australia around Mparntwe or Alice Springs in the Northern Territory. The Arrernte tribe has lived there for more than 20,000 years...
(Aranda, Arunta) groups. Tjurunga often had a wide and indeterminate native significance, they included: Sacred ceremonies, Stone Objects, Wooden sacred objects, Bullroarers, Sacred ground paintings, Ceremonial poles, Ceremonial headgear, Sacred chants, Sacred earth mounds (Strehlow, 1947)
Meaning
Generally speaking, tjurunga denote sacredSacred
Holiness, or sanctity, is in general the state of being holy or sacred...
stone or wooden objects possessed by private or group owners together with the legends, chants, and ceremonies associated with them. They were present among the Arunta, the Loritja, the Kaitish, the Unmatjera, and the Illpirra. These items are generally oblong pieces of polished stone or wood. Some of these items have hair or string strung through it and were named “bull roarer
Bullroarer (music)
The bullroarer, rhombus, or turndun, is an ancient ritual musical instrument and a device historically used for communicating over greatly-extended distances. It dates to the Paleolithic period, being found in Ukraine dating from 17,000 BC...
s" by Europeans. Upon each tjurunga is a totem
Totem
A totem is a stipulated ancestor of a group of people, such as a family, clan, group, lineage, or tribe.Totems support larger groups than the individual person. In kinship and descent, if the apical ancestor of a clan is nonhuman, it is called a totem...
of the group to which it belongs. Tjurunga are highly sacred, in fact, they are considered so sacred that only a few were able to see them and likewise it is considered sacrilegious to post a picture of them. Durkheim suggest that the name “churinga” is normally a noun, but can also be used as an adjective meaning “sacred.”
The term Tjurunga was translated by Strehlow to mean something similar to secret and personal. With Tju meaning hidden, secret, and runga meaning that which is personal to me. Kempe argued against this translation and suggested that Tju means great, powerful, or sacred and that runga it did not translate into personal ownership.
Ownership
The ownership of sacred tjurunga amongst the ArrernteArrernte people
The Arrernte people , known in English as the Aranda or Arunta, are those Indigenous Australians who are the original custodians of Arrernte lands in the central area of Australia around Mparntwe or Alice Springs in the Northern Territory. The Arrernte tribe has lived there for more than 20,000 years...
groups was determined largely by 'the conception site' of every individual member of a patrilineal totemic clan
Clan
A clan is a group of people united by actual or perceived kinship and descent. Even if lineage details are unknown, clan members may be organized around a founding member or apical ancestor. The kinship-based bonds may be symbolical, whereby the clan shares a "stipulated" common ancestor that is a...
. Because these relics are considered so sacred, their availability is limited to a small number of people. During the early 20th century and before, only initiated males were able to see or touch these sacred objects. Women and uninitiated males were not allowed to touch them or see them, except from a far distance. The tjurunga were kept separately from the rest of the clan in a sacred location that was also unavailable to the uninitiated and women.
While some theorists, such as Strehlow, have suggested these relics are amongst the very few forms of property, which may be owned legitimately by individual persons in Central Australia. Durkheim and Kempe contend that the Tjurunga can not be owned by an individual. For example, Durkheim writes, “As concerns the meaning of the word runga, that seems very doubtful. The ceremonies of the Emu belong to all the members of the Emu clan; all can participate in them; they are not the personal property of any member.” (Durkheim, 119)
Religious Aspects
In many mythsMythology
The term mythology can refer either to the study of myths, or to a body or collection of myths. As examples, comparative mythology is the study of connections between myths from different cultures, whereas Greek mythology is the body of myths from ancient Greece...
the ancestors themselves are said to have used them and stored them away as their most treasured possessions. Such myths emphasise the life-holding magical properties of these tjuringas. The ancestor regarded his tjurunga as portions of his own being; and is always anxious that strangers might come and rob him of the very essence of his life. Accordingly, the legends abound with stories of theft and robbery, and the very fierce vengeance exacted. tjuringa were considered to have magical properties. They would be rubbed on the body to confer sacredness onto the subject and to do things such as heal wounds. While tjuringa was useful to the individual, the clan’s collective fate was also considered to be tied up with the items. After all, it was the totemic image that provided representation for the group on the tjuringa.
The acquisition of sufficient knowledge leading to possession of personal tjurunga was long, difficult and sometimes extremely painful. Practices differed amongst the various groups. Ted Strehlow
Ted Strehlow
Theodor George Henry Strehlow was an anthropologist who studied the Arrernte Australian Aborigines in Central Australia. He was considered a member of the Arrernte people, by dint of his ritual adoption by the tribe...
describes how the men from the Northern, Southern and Western Arrernte
Arrernte people
The Arrernte people , known in English as the Aranda or Arunta, are those Indigenous Australians who are the original custodians of Arrernte lands in the central area of Australia around Mparntwe or Alice Springs in the Northern Territory. The Arrernte tribe has lived there for more than 20,000 years...
groups were put on probation for several years after their last initiation
Initiation
Initiation is a rite of passage ceremony marking entrance or acceptance into a group or society. It could also be a formal admission to adulthood in a community or one of its formal components...
s.
Ceremonial significance
The tjurunga were visible embodiments of some part of the fertilityFertility
Fertility is the natural capability of producing offsprings. As a measure, "fertility rate" is the number of children born per couple, person or population. Fertility differs from fecundity, which is defined as the potential for reproduction...
of the great ancestor of the totem in question. The body of the ancestor merely undergoes a transmutation into something that will weather all the assaults of time, change and decay. Stone tjurunga were thought to have been made by the ancestors themselves. The wooden tjurunga made by the old men are symbolical of the actual tjurunga which "cannot be found". These "man-made" tjurunga were accepted without reservation as sacred objects.
At the time of receiving his tjurunga-body a young man may be twenty five years of age. He will often be thirty-five or forty years of age before the most sacred chants and ceremonies that are linked with it have passed into his possession. As he grows older and continues to demonstrate his worthiness, he receives an ever-increasing share in the tjurunga owned by his own totemic clan. Eventually he may become a member of the assembly of old ceremonial chiefs who are honoured trustees for the ancient traditions of the whole clan.
In 1933, Strehlow noted that after the advent of white men to Central Australia, the young men employed by the foreign intruders were watched very closely by the old men of their group. In many cases, unless the young men were outstandingly generous in their gifts towards their elders, no ceremonies or chants of power and importance were handed on to this unworthy younger generation. With the death of the old men such chants and ceremonies passed into oblivion.
Acquisition of knowledge
The old men would carefully note a young man's conduct. He had to be respectful towards his elders; he had to be attentive to their advice in all things. He would know the value of silence in ceremonial matters: no account of his past experiences could be spoken with the hearing of women and children. His own marriage had to conform to the laws of the group. Then one day the old men, sitting in a circle, would call him in to sit down in their midst. They began to chant. One man told Strehlow:- The old men seized my hand. They all struck up the chant-verse:
- With fierce eyes, with glowing eyes, they seize the thumb;
- With fierce eyes, with glowing eyes, they rip off the nail.
- An old man produced a sharp kangaroo bone (ntjala). He stabbed my thumb with it, pushed the bone deeply underneath the nail. He drew the point out; the rest kept up the chant. He thrust it under the nail in a different place. He gradually loosened the thumbnail. It was slippery with blood. I almost shrieked with pain; the torment was unbearable. I have not forgotten it: the pain was not slight; it was exceedingly great. When the nail had been loosened, he took a sharp opossum tooth, forced it into the living flesh through the base of the thumb-nail, and tore the nail off from behind. Blood spurted over his hand. The man chanted:
- They rip off the nail, they tear off the nail;
- Blood flows like a river, rushes along like a river.
- Then they seized my left hand and removed the thumb-nail in like manner.
- Nowadays we make a great concession to the young men in our group. We no longer tear off their finger-nails. The price is too high; we give the tjurunga to them at a much lower cost. Besides, the young men of the present generation are no longer hardy enough to endure such pain.
Relationship to Historical Research
These sacred relics were of high interest to early European anthropologists and sociologists, who were studying the nature of totemic religion and the sacred. Scholars such as Spencer, Gillen, Strehlow, Kempe and Durkheim all studied tjurunga. Durkheim discusses the nature of tjurunga throughout his seminal work The Elementary Forms of Religious Life. Durkheim considered the tjurunga to be an archetypes of the sacred item.External links
- Flight of Ducks Documented sales of Tjurunga with descriptions collated from online auction sites.
- Sacred Journey An ABC documentary in which the Director of the South Australian Museum tries to return Aboriginal tjurungas to their original communities, along the way exploring their significance and mystery.
Aboriginal readers from Central and Western Desert regions are respectfully advised that viewing or displaying images of sacred objects may be considered inappropriate by their communities.
- Example of a Tjurunga at the Logos Foundation.
