SACRED ABORIGINAL STONES

Evening Star, Issue 19663, 16 September 1927, Page 10

SACRED ABORIGINAL STONES

RIFLED FROM GAVE BOUGHT BY MELBOURNE TOURIST. Considerable indignation has been aroused in Melbourne by disclosures that a member of a party of tourists which recently visited Central Australia brought back with him a, number of churingas, the sacred stones of tho Arunfa tribe of aborigines in the centre of this continent. These stones are used in tho sacred rites of tho tribe, which is fast dwindling in number, and are used on highly ceremonial occasions only. They have drawings and carvings of animals and plants upon them, and students of aboriginal loro declare that they form valuable data in tho history of Australian natives. To have removed them from their sacred hiding place is considered by experts and ethnologists to be sacrilegious. These sacred stones may bo seen only by initiated members of tho tribe. They are hidden from the sight of women and the uninitiated In tho Arunfa and other tribes of Central Australia, the ancestors of they tribes are regarded as the transformations !)!' various animals, the name of which each human bears as bis or her totemic name, and each chuvinga is associated with some totem Tho tourist who brought churingas to Melbourne declared that ho had bought them from a white man, who apparently, had secured th,cm from a native who had taken ther/> away from their sacred resting-place. The white man told the tourist that the native would bo put to death by the tribe if bis act was discovered. This was confirmed by Melbourne ethnologists who said that tho plundering of tho hoard of churingas was a sacrilege equal to stealing the sacred emblems from a Christian church