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Updated: June 4, 2025
Tylor most properly takes a distinction between sleeping 'dreams' and waking 'visions, or 'clear vision. The distinction is made even by the blacks of Australia. Thus one of the Kurnai announced that his Yambo, or soul, could 'go out' during sleep, and see the distant and the dead.
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.
Setting mythology aside and looking only at cult, the God of the Murring or the Kurnai, whose precepts soften the heart, who knows the heart's secrets, who inculcates chastity, respect of age, unselfishness, who is not bound by conditions of space or place, who receives no blood of slaughtered man or beast, is a conception from which the ordinary polytheistic gods of infinitely more polite peoples are frankly degenerate.
Bachofen, Das Mutterrecht, Stuttgart, 1861; Lewis H. Morgan, Ancient Society, or Researches in the Lines of Human Progress from Savagery through Barbarism to Civilization, New York, 1877; J.F. MacLennan, Studies in Ancient History, 1st series, new edition, 1886; 2nd series, 1896; L. Fison and A.W. Howitt, Kamilaroi and Kurnai, Melbourne.
In fact, granting a relatively pure starting-point, degeneration from it must accompany every step of civilisation, to a certain distance. Unlike Semitic gods, Darumulun receives no sacrifice. The Kurnai ghosts 'were believed to live upon plants, which are not offered to them. Chill ghosts, unfed by men, would come to waning camp-fires and batten on the broken meats.
+525+. Thus, for example, the contrast between the social system of sterile Central Australia and that of certain tribes on the comparatively fertile southeast coast is marked; the Kurnai have practically no clan totemism. In the islands of Torres Straits and in New Guinea agriculture marks a dividing line between stricter and looser organizations based on regard for the totem.
Moreover, as is well known, among many tribes elsewhere it is the father who is put to bed, while the mother goes about her work as if nothing had happened.” Kamilaroi and Kurnai, p. 358. Another important advantage arising to women, through their identification with the early industrial process, was their position as the first property owners.
'Some children of the Kurnai in playing about found a turndun, which they took home to the camp and showed the women. Immediately the earth crumbled away, and it was all water, and the Kurnai were drowned. In consequence of all this mummery the Australian women attach great sacredness to the very name of the turndun. They are much less instructed in their own theology than the men of the tribe.
A savage example, in which a Fuegian native on board an English ship saw his father, who was expiring in Tierra del Fuego, has the respectable authority of Mr. Darwin's Cruise of the Beagle. Fison and Howitt's Kamilaroi and Kurnai. From New Zealand Mr.
We may next examine cases in which, the savage medium being entranced, spirits come to him and answer questions. Our authorities are Mr. Fison and Howitt, in Kamilaroi and Kurnai, who tell just the same tale. The spirits in Victoria are called Mrarts, and are understood to be the souls of Black Fellows dead and gone, not demons unattached. The mediums, now very scarce, are Birraarks.
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