No. MUS2026-353
Chakma whirring wood
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.
Particulars
- 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, East and South Asia collection list (objects from 1921), 2020 public collection extract, PDF p. 132, inventory 28.18:230