In Reuther’s dictionary there are 533 mentions of muramura ‘ancestral beings’, typically within the Mythology sections of entries. The muramura have a major significance in Dieri traditional beliefs, ceremonies, and religion. Reuther collected a large amount of material about their affiliations, travels, and their behaviours, most of which remains in the undigitised volumes X and XI. In this document we have extracted all the mentions of muramura in the Dictionary, systematised their naming, and present them as a list sorted by the individual names of the muramura.
The entries in this index have the following structure:
- Identifier – each Ancestral Being that is mentioned is given a number plus the letter M;
- Reuther spelling – Reuther sometimes spells muramura names in different ways so we have established a single spelling in order to sort the index records. Usually, this is the most frequent spelling, where there are multiple variations used by Reuther. These names are in green.
- Gender – whether the muramura is male or female.
- Tribe – some muramura are associated with particular named groups (given in orange). Here we give neighbouring group names: Karangura, Ngamini, Pilardapa, Thirrari, Wangkangurru.
- Editor — presents comments or additional information compiled by Peter K. Austin.
- See – gives the reference number of the entry in the Dictionary where the muramura is mentioned (these Dictionary numbers can be looked up in the Specialist edition, but not in the user-friendly edition). Subentries are indicated by a hyphen, thus 1522-40 refers to the 40th subentry within the entry 1522 (“muramura”).
- Mythology – reproduces the information about the relevant muramura in the Dictionary entry.
- See: Placename – gives the reference number in the Placenames Supplement of any place mentioned in the Mythology material (such placenames are in blue). A clickable link below this takes the user to the Placenames list.
Comments and corrections to this index are welcome. If users need a Word or Excel version of the listing for their own research please request one via the Contact form.
To go to the list of muramura Ancestral Beings names click here.
To go to the list of resources click here.