SEA-002 - museum specimen
Dyak
Indonesia - Southwest Kalimantan - Borneo - Southeast Asia
Function not recorded
hantu-hantuan English
Source term: Bull-Roarer Hantu-Hantuan
hantu-hantuan — Malay/Indonesian, a reduplicated form of hantu ("ghost, spirit"), roughly "the spirit thing" or "spirit-like"; the name attached to the object in the museum record.
Etymology. Reduplicated `hantu` form; current sources treat it as a spirit/ghost-derived label attached to the object. (high confidence)
A bullroarer collected among the Dyak of southwestern Kalimantan and catalogued by the Smithsonian under the name hantu-hantuan, a reduplication of the Malay word hantu, ghost or spirit, roughly "the spirit thing." It was one of more than seventeen hundred Bornean objects gathered by the American naturalist William Louis Abbott, who collected on the rivers of both coasts of Borneo, mostly between 1905 and 1909, working from his schooner the Terrapin. The museum record names the instrument but says nothing of how it was sounded or by whom, and the Sarawak Museum's own catalogue of Bornean musical instruments lists no bullroarer among its strings, winds, jews-harps, gongs, and drums.
- Function
- Smithsonian object evidence from Southwest Kalimantan with no use stated
- Map confidence
- high - Southwest Kalimantan source place not Smithsonian location
- Source location
- API search 2026-05-31