Dyak Hantu-Hantuan Southwest Kalimantan bullroarer

hantu-hantuan

Source term: Bull-Roarer Hantu-Hantuan

hantu-hantuan — Malay/Indonesian, a reduplicated form of hantu ("ghost, spirit"), roughly "the spirit thing" or "spirit-like."

Etymology. A reduplication of Malay hantu, 'ghost, spirit'.

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, mostly between 1905 and 1909, working from his schooner the Terrapin. Its own use is a blank. Across Borneo the bull-roarer was a boys' toy with a single further office: when jungle was cleared for padi, a few trees were spared for the Toh, the spirits of the place, and a bull-roarer was sometimes hung on a cross-piece lashed to such a tree "to dangle and flicker in the breeze." Hose and McDougall, who set that down in Pagan Tribes of Borneo (1912), knew of no other use.

Particulars

Function

Not recorded.