Tjuringa

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A wooden tjurunga made for tourist sales

A Tjurunga or Churinga , Tjuringa is an item of religious significance for the Central Australian natives of the Arandic groups and some surrounding tribes. Tjurunga often had a broad and indefinite meaning, because according to Strehlow the term encompassed sacred ceremonies, stone and wooden objects, buzzing devices , floor drawings , ceremonial stakes, ceremonial headdresses, chants and mounds of earth.

meaning

Tjurunga generally refers to sacred stones or woods. The objects are elongated stones and woods, some of which are polished, smooth or ornamented. Some of these items are braided with hair or ribbons and were called buzzers by Europeans . On each tjurunga there is a totem of the group to which it belongs. Tjurunga are sacred in the occult and only a select few are allowed to look at them. It is considered sacrilege to take a picture of it. Émile Durkheim assumes that the name Tjurunga is usually a noun , but can also be used as an adjective in the meaning of "holy".

Theodore Strehlow translated the term Tjurunga roughly with something similar to "secret", "personal". Here Tju means hidden, secret and runga personal. H. Kempe argues against this translation and says that Tju means great, powerful or holy and that runga cannot be translated as personal property.

property

The ownership of sacred Tjurunga among the Arrernte , Luritja , Kaitish , Unmatjera, and Illpirra was largely determined by the place of receipt of each individual member of a patrilineal clan . They belong to individuals or groups with the associated legends, chants and ceremonies. Because these relics are considered so sacred, their availability is limited to a few people. Before and during the early 20th century, only initiated men were allowed to see or touch the sacred objects. Women and uninitiated men were not allowed to touch or see them except from a great distance. The Tjurunga were kept secret by the rest of the clan in a sacred place, which was also inaccessible to uninitiated and women.

While some scientists, such as B. Theodore Strehlow, have suggested that these relics are among the few properties that can legitimately be owned by individuals in Central Australia, Durkheim and Kempe defend the view that the tjurunga cannot be owned by an individual. For example, B. Durkheim: “As far as the meaning of the word runga is concerned, it seems doubtful. The ceremonies of the Great Emus are all members of the clan with the Great Emu totem; everyone can participate in them; they are not the personal property of any member. "

Religious Aspects

In many myths it is said that the ancestors used Tjurunga themselves and kept it safe as their most valuable possession. Such myths emphasize the life-sustaining magical properties of this tjurunga. The forefathers viewed their tjurunga as part of their own being and were always concerned that strangers might rob it of its true content. Accordingly, there are numerous stories of theft and robbery that result in extremely cruel revenge. Tjurunga were seen as endowed with magical properties. They were rubbed on the body to confer their holiness and to heal wounds. While a tjurunga was useful to the individual, the collective fate of the clan was viewed as tied to the object. Last but not least, it was the totem that ensured that the group found itself through the Tjurunga.

Acquiring the knowledge that would result in personal tjurunga has been long, difficult, and sometimes extremely painful. Practices differed between different groups. Theodore Strehlow writes how the men of the North, South and West Arrernte groups had to prove themselves over several years after their last initiation stage .

Ceremonial meaning

The Tjurunga were visible embodiments of some parts of the fertility of the great ancestors of the respective totem. The ancestral body is transmutated into something that will survive time, change and decay. In the minds of the Aborigines, stone tjurunga were made by their forefathers themselves. Wooden tjurunga, made by the old men, are symbolic of the actual tjurunga that "cannot be found". The "man-made" tjurunga were accepted as sacred objects without reservation. A young man can receive his Tjurunga body at the age of 25 and be 35 to 45 years old before the most sacred chants and the ceremonies associated with them pass into his possession. The older he gets and the more he proves that he is worth the tjurunga, the more he gets a steadily growing share of the tjurunga that belongs to his own totem clan. Under certain circumstances he can become a member of the Assembly of Masters of Ceremonies, who are the honored trustees of the ancient traditions of the entire clan.

In 1933, Strehlow noticed that the young men employed by the foreign invaders after the whites arrived in Central Australia were being watched closely by the old men in their groups. In many cases, no ceremonies or chants were given to the unworthy younger generation unless the young men made exceedingly generous gifts to their elders. With the death of the old men, these chants and ceremonies were forgotten.

Acquisition of knowledge

The old men observe the behavior of a young man. He must be full of respect for the elders, he must take their advice in all things. He will know the value of silence in ceremonial matters: no description of his past experiences may be uttered in the presence of women and children. His own wedding had to comply with the laws of the group. If all of this is the case, one day the old men sitting in a circle will ask him to sit in their midst to start singing. An elder told Strehlow:

"The elder took my hand; they joined in the chant:
With wild eyes, with glowing eyes, they grasp the thumb;
With wild eyes, with glowing eyes, they tear off the nail.
An elder made a sharp kangaroo bone ( ntjala ). He stabbed my thumb with it, poked the bone deep under my fingernail. He pulled out the tip, the others went on singing. He pushed the tip under the nail in a different place and gradually loosened the fingernail and everything was covered in blood. I screamed in pain; the agony was unbearable. I have not forgotten: the pain was not small; he was extraordinarily tall. When the nail was loosened, he took a sharp opossum tooth , stuck it into the living flesh through the base of the thumbnail, and pulled the nail from behind. Blood splattered his hand. The man sang:
They tear the nail off, they tear the nail off;
Blood flows like a river, rushes like a river.
Then they took my left hand and removed the thumbnail in the same way.
Today we make great concessions to the young men in our group. We don't pull their fingernails out anymore. The price is too high, we give them the Tjurunga at a lower cost. Besides that, today's young men of the current generation are no longer hard enough to endure such pain. "

Relationship to historical research

The sacred relics were of great interest to the early European anthropologists and sociologists who studied the nature of totem religions. Researchers like Walter Baldwin Spencer , Francis James Gillen , Theodore Strehlow, H. Kempe and Emile Durkheim studied the Tjurunga. Durkheim discussed the nature of the Tjurunga in his seminar paper The Elementary Forms of Religious Life and viewed the Tjurunga as an archetype of a sacred object.

literature

  • Emile Durkheim: The Elementary Forms of Religious Life. Translated from: Karen Fields, The Free Press, 1995 (first published in 1912)
  • H. Kempe: Vocabulary of the Tribes Inhabiting the Macdonnell Ranges. RSSA, v.XIV, 1898 pp. 1-54
  • Karl-Heinz Kohl : The Power of Things. Theory and history of sacred objects. Munich: CH Beck, 2003, pp. 174-188
  • Walter Baldwin Spencer, Francis James Gillen: The Arunta - a Study of Stone Age People. Macmillan, London, 1927, Vol. II, p. 571
  • TGH Strehlow : Aranda Traditions. Melbourne University Press, 1947, pp. 85-86
  • Wighard Strehlow, Wüstentanz, Experience Australia spiritually, 2nd edition 1997, www.australien1930.de

Web links