152 Froceedings of the Royal Socu'ty of Victor la. 



The quabarra which are performed at these initiation cere- 

 monies vary according to the locality in which they are being- 

 pei'formed and the men who are taking the leading part in them. 

 If, for example, the old man who is presiding belongs to the 

 Emu totem then the quabarra will, at all events to a certain 

 extent, repi-esent incidents concerned with ancesti-al Emu men. 

 In the particular ceremony upon which the present account is 

 based, the old man presiding belonged to the Kangaroo totem 

 and thus quabarra concerned especially with this totem were 

 much in evidence. The totem of the youth who is being initiated 

 has no influence whatever on the nature of the particular 

 quabarra performed. Each old man who presides over, or takes 

 a leading part in, a ceremony such as this has possession of a 

 certain number of (juabarra and naturally those performed are 

 cliosen from this series. llemembering, therefore, that the 

 particular qua])arra vary from ceremony to ceremony, the 

 account now given may be regarded as representing in essential 

 features the details of the initiation ceremony of circumcision 

 amongst the Arunta tribe. At the same time it is also necessary 

 to reuiember that ceremonial objects, such as the Waninga, 

 which figure largely in some districts are unknown in others 

 where th ir place is taken by entirely different objects. Thus, 

 for example, in the northern part of the tribe a sacred pole 

 called a Nuitunga is used and this, where it is used, has 

 precisely the significance of the Waninga which is never met 

 with in the northern distincts. For an outline of an initiation 

 ceremony in which the Nurtunga is used reference may be made 

 to the account already written by one of us in connection with 

 the ceremony of subincision amongst the northern Arunta.^ 



On the next day another quabarra is performed, this time by 

 two kangaroo men and one man representing a dog. Once more 

 the dog is killed (it may be mentioned here that in similar 

 ceremonies associated with the wild-dog totem it is the kangaroo 

 which is killed), finally the three men throw themselves on tojD 

 of the Wurtja, after which the latter is once more told by the 

 old men what the ceremony means and is again taken back to 

 the brake at the western end of the Apulia. 



1 Report of Horn Kxpeditioii to Central Australia, vol. iv., p. 17:5. 



