Evidence dossier: Daramulum

Evidence dossier 119 — Daramulum. Every exhibit catalogued, every ruling stated with its grounds.

At a Glance

• Canonical form: Daramulum
• Original script: —
• Pantheon: Aboriginal
• Convention: the tradition’s own scholarly transliteration standard
• False forms on record: 0
• Contested forms: none attested
• Series: The Canonical Register, No. 119 of 548

The Evidence

Exhibit 1 — the attestation. The tradition's record preserves this name in its romanized scholarly form: Daramulum — no older script survives to transcribe, so the canonical content is the exactness of the spelling itself.

Exhibit 2 — the flattened form. The plain form daramulum differs from the canonical Daramulum only by convention of display — case, not content. It is acceptable everywhere: in legacy systems, in plain-text citation, in the DNS itself. What is not acceptable is what follows in the register: respellings that change the letters, not just their case.

Exhibit 3 — the physical record. Daramulum left no temples and signed no inscriptions — the evidence is the ground itself. Bora rings, the circular ceremonial earthworks of initiation, survive in their thousands across New South Wales and Queensland, many mapped by R. H. Mathews in the 1890s and 1900s; conserved examples include the Currumbin bora ring on the Gold Coast and rings within national parks of the central coast. Carved trees (dendroglyphs) that once marked bora grounds are rarer, surviving largely in museum collections after removal in the late nineteenth century. Baiame Cave at Milbrodale near Singleton preserves large rock engravings of Baiame, the sky-father to whom the bora was addressed. Bullroarers — the voice of Daramulum — are held by the Australian Museum and regional collections, some recorded with the ceremonies in which they sounded. The Emu in the Sky, of course, is still overhead.

Exhibit 4 — the continuing record. Daramulum's legacy survives in three registers. Ceremonially, the bora tradition that was his theatre continued in modified form into the twentieth century and is now being revived on country, with bora rings — the stone and earth circles that once centred initiation — protected as heritage sites across New South Wales and Queensland.

The Convention's Own History

Every tradition in this register has its own scholarly transliteration standard, built by its own specialists over decades or centuries, and the register follows each on its own terms: the tradition’s own standard. The principle that unifies them is the one the whole project stands on: a name is evidence, and evidence is not negotiable — not for keyboards, not for convenience, not for anyone.

The Protocol's Position

Can the canonical form live in the address bar? Almost always, yes. IDNA 2008 admits every mark this register defends — the DNS stores them as `xn--` punycode and modern browsers render them natively. The real frictions are practical, not legal: some registrars stock only part of the IDN space, so a theoretically valid name can be temporarily unbuyable; and stacked combinations (an acute riding a macron) remain awkward to type on mobile keyboards even where the protocol accepts them.

The project's answer is a ranked ladder, not a compromise: the full restoration first, then attested fallbacks in descending order of completeness. The ladder's lowest rung, plain ASCII, is a vehicle for legacy systems — sanctioned, but never presented as the scholarly form.

The Verdict

Case closed on Daramulum: canonical, cited, and defended. The keyboard form daramulum is the same name in another register of display — always acceptable. The register's files remain open: if a source surfaces that changes any line of this entry, the entry changes. Until then, the temple at /daramulum/ holds the canonical form.

The docket for this ruling: no false forms on the docket; no contested forms attested; the attestation rests on 6 cited sources — Parker, K. Langloh, The Euahlayi Tribe: A Study of Aboriginal Life in Australia, Archibald Constable, 1905, Howitt, A. W., The Native Tribes of South-East Australia, Macmillan, 1904, Berndt, Ronald M. and Catherine H. Berndt, The World of the First Australians: Aboriginal Traditional Life: Past and Present, Lansdowne Press, 1964; revised 1992.

The Register Continues

This is one of 548 entries in the Canonical Register — the authoritative reference for every flagship temple. The temple's founding dispatch tells the name's story; its Restoration File details the marks; its Resonance File reads the archetype into the industries. The blog index holds the whole archive, and the Rulebook states the convention this register enforces.

Continue the register — previous entry: Dangun (read it) · next entry: Dāwîḏ (read it).

The Canonical Register is written from the same canonical record as the lexicon itself. If a false form is missing from this page, it is because the evidence does not support calling it false — or because we have not seen it yet. Show us, with a citation, and the register will answer.