MUS2026-353 - museum specimen
Chakma hill-tracts Schwirrholz
Bangladesh - Rangamati District - Chittagong Hill Tracts - South Asia
Function not recorded
Source term: Schwirrholz
Schwirrholz (German): literally “whirring wood”; the historic catalog designation.
The Chakma are the largest people of the Chittagong Hill Tracts, Buddhist rice-farmers and weavers of the hill country now in southeastern Bangladesh, with Rangamati at their heart. In March 1928 a single sounding implement from that district entered the Hamburg ethnological museum under one German word: Schwirrholz, whirring wood. It arrived among sandals, silver earrings, a flour gourd and a model dugout canoe — a compact glimpse of Chakma household life. What the roarer was made of, and what anyone did with it, nobody wrote down.
1 Schwirrholz
One bullroarer / whirring wood.
MARKK East and South Asia collection list (objects from 1921), PDF p. 132, inventory 28.18:230.
- Object
- One object catalogued as Schwirrholz from Rangamati District in the Chittagong Hill Tracts, attributed to Chakma and entered in 1928; material, dimensions, cord and form are not published.
- Function
- Not recorded.
- Source
- MARKK inventory 28.18:230: one Schwirrholz; Rangamati District / Chittagong Hill Tracts; Chakma (historic spelling Cakma); entered 5 March 1928
- Source location
- PDF p. 132
- Source confidence
- low to medium Rangamati, the district MARKK records; not an object findspot.