Buddai

According to Robert Mackenzie, the Australian aborigines have legends about Buddai, a gigantic old man who lies asleep for ages underground with his head on his arm, and who will some day awake and eat up the world. They connect these legends with talk about "great stones with marks on them." [HPL Time (online text)] The "great stones" are probably ruins left by the Great Race.

Lovecraft may have learned of Buddai from an old Encylopedia Brittanica article on Australia: "The only idea of a god known to be entertained by these people, is that of Buddai, a gigantic old man lying asleep for ages, with his head resting upon his arm, which is deep in the sand. He is expected one day to awake and eat up the world. They have no religion beyond those gloomy dreams." [Australia, Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 3, p. 113. Thanks to Michael Bukowski for publicizing this quote on yog-blogsoth.blogspot.com (retrieved 07/08/2024).]

"The Turrabool speaking aborigines who inhabited the district of the Upper Brisbane River, in South Queensland, had a tradition regarding a spirit or unseen Being whom they called Budjali. This being was called Buddai (Buddha 1) by another tribe. They believed him to be the common ancestor of their race, and described him as an old man of great stature. They stated that he had been lying asleep for ages with his head leaning on one arm , and the arm buried deep in the sand. A long time ago Budjah awoke, and the whole country was flooded with water. When it had subsided he fell asleep, and they believe that some day he will wake again and get up, and that on that occasion he will devour all the aborigines." [J. W. Fawcett, Australian Aborigines. A Burial Ceremony of the Waw-Wypter Tribe. Australasian Anthropological Journal. Issue Vol.1 No.6 (31 May 1897). This article was brought to my attention by the article Australia, H. P. Lovecraft Wiki. ret. 07/18/2024]

The accuracy of these late nineteenth-century sources may be doubtful. I have been unable to locate any more modern references to Buddai or Budjali in aboriginal lore.

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