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But the locally intermediate tribe of the Wiraijuri, or Wiradthuri, have adopted Baiame, and reduced Daramulun to an exploded bugbear, a merely nominal superintendent of the Mysteries; and the southern Coast Murring have rejected Baiame altogether, or never knew him, while making Daramulun supreme. One obvious method of reconciling various tribal Gods in a syncretic Olympus, is the genealogical.
But Daramulun is likewise endowed with a human form; for they set up an image of him rudely shaped in wood, and round about it dance and shout his name. Daramulun instituted these rites, as well as all the other immemorial rites of the assembled tribe or tribes. So when over the heads of the boys, prostrated on the ground, are recited solemnly what Mr.
Whatever else the high god of these mysteries, Daramulun, may be for these people and undoubtedly all sorts of trains of confused thinking meet in the notion of him he is at any rate the god of the bull-roarer, who has put his voice into the sacred instrument.
He dwells above "the vaulted sky beyond which lies the mysterious home of that great and powerful Being, who is Bunjil, Baiame, or Daramulun in different tribal languages, but who in all is known by a name the equivalent of the only one used by the Kurnai, which is Mungan-ngaur, or 'Our Father." This Father is conceived of in some places as "a very great old man with a long beard," enthroned on, or growing into, a crystal throne.
The much-discussed Australian figures, Baiame, Bunjil, and Daramulun, appear not to differ essentially from those just mentioned.
Once more, syncretism came in as a mythopoeic influence. Say that several Australian nations, becoming more polite, amalgamated into a settled people. Then we should have several Gods, the chief Beings of various tribes, say Noorele, Bunjil, Mungan- ngaur, Baiame, Daramulun, Mangarrah, Mulkari, Pinmeheal. The most imposing God of the dominant tribe might be elevated to the sovereignty of Zeus.
Such, for example, are Baiame, Daramulun, Bunjil of Australia, perhaps Supu of the Melanesian island of Vate. +678+. In Polynesia there is a better-defined cosmogonic anthropomorphism. The Hawaiian creators Kane and Tangaloa appear to be fully formed deities. The Maoris have the divine figures Heaven and Earth, whose children are the producers of all things in the world.
Now the trouble with anthropologists is to find a working definition of religion on which they can agree. Christianity is religion, all would have to admit. Again, Mahomedanism is religion, for all anthropological purposes. But, when a naked savage "dances" his god when the spoken part of the rite simply consists, as amongst the south-eastern Australians, in shouting "Daramulun! Daramulun!"
As they looked, the tree quivered more and more, then was violently agitated and fell to the ground, while amid the excited dancing of the dancers and the chanting of the choir the supposed dead man spurned from him the superincumbent mass of sticks and leaves, and springing to his feet danced his magic dance in the grave itself, and exhibited in his mouth the magic substances which he was supposed to have received from Daramulun in person.
Dunbar, and the author of the Hymn, and the savage with his tale of Tundun or Daramulun, have all quite contradictory sets of ideas alternately present to their minds; the mediaeval poet, of course, being conscious of the contradiction, which makes the essence of his humour, such as it is.
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