Definitions
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. Something sacred or secret, applied both to an object and to the quality possessed by it. It is most frequently used to signify the sacred stones and sticks of the Arunta tribe of central Australia.
Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes of Central Australia, p. 648.
Wiktionary
- n. Alternative form of tjurunga.
Examples
“Dr. Munro next reproduces two _wooden_ churinga (_churinga irula_), as being very unlike the Clydesdale objects _in stone_ {84a} (figures 5, 6).”
“They carried with them sacred stones called churinga, i.e. soul or spirit-life.”
“{80a} I have no concern with an object, never seen by Dr. Munro, or by me, to my knowledge, but described as a "churinga"; in _Journal of”
“They believed that conception was occasioned by the woman passing near a churinga -- a peculiarly shaped piece of wood or stone, in which a spirit-child was concealed, which entered into her.”
“Further, their most important function is to take charge of the sacred storehouse, usually a cleft in the rocks or a hole in the ground, where are kept the holy stones and sticks (churinga) with which the souls of all the people, both living and dead, are apparently supposed to be in a manner bound up.”
“The rites of initiation in this tribe, as in the other Central tribes, comprise the operations of circumcision and subincision; and as soon as the second of these has been performed on him, the young man receives from his father a sacred stick (churinga), with which, he is told, his spirit was associated in the remotest past.”
“Thus the totem of the child will be the totem of the spot whence the churinga was taken.”
“The object, e.g. stone, piece of wood, etc., that met her eye at that moment is carefully taken as the churinga of the child and placed in the secret storehouse of the tribe kept for that purpose.”
“Upon death the spirit-life would remain in the churinga and would haunt the place where these were.”
“All the birth-stones or sticks (_churinga_) belonging to any particular totemic group are kept together, hidden away from the eyes of women and uninitiated men, in a sacred store-house or _ertnatulunga_, as the”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘churinga’.
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Brochettes of Random Palavery
Another of my random palavery lists for words or phrases that haven't yet found a place in one or more of my other lists.
nonexclusivity, adaptationist, paxillin, adduct, unblushingly cribbed, ptomaïne, microsievert, millisievert, too big to jail, tastemaker, tinsmithing, Nimzo-Indian and 1616 more...
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Amulets
charm, talisman, totem, fetish, voodoo, juju, churinga, zogo, horseshoe, holy-stone, bezoar, toadstone and 57 more...
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