SEA-008 - secondary catalog
Jalor (Yala) Malays
Patani region, Kampong Jalor (Yala, S. Thailand) - Southeast Asia - Mainland
Play / practical
baling / baling / berbaling
Source term: baling
Malay baling (also berbaling), "whizzing-stick," the term Annandale and Robinson recorded at Jalor. Second recorded term: brong-brong gajah (MAA Z 33919, coll. Skeat at Biserat; Skeat II:26).
Etymology. Malay baling (also berbaling) means roughly "turnabout" — something that whirls or turns around, from the verb baling, to whirl or throw in a circular motion overhead. The same word also names the toy wind-mills. (medium confidence)
In the Malay villages of Jalor, now Yala in southern Thailand, the baling or berbaling drove elephants out of the plantations: a very thin bamboo blade, eight inches by three-quarters, strung to a slender stick and whirled to a hum. When Annandale and Robinson collected one at Kampong Jalor in 1901-02 the device was already nearly obsolete, kept up mainly as a child's toy — a farm voice slipping into play.
Now almost obsolete, but occasionally made as a Malay child's toy. Formerly it was used for scaring elephants from plantations.
Annandale & Robinson, Fasciculi Malayenses, Anthropology Pt II (1903), p. 21, item 31
- Object
- Very thin bamboo blade (~8 in) on a string and stick, whirled to produce a humming sound. PRM 1902.88.100 is a complete Jalor cane example: blade 200 x 17 mm, with cord and a 330 mm whirling stick.
- Function
- Formerly used to scare elephants from plantations; now nearly obsolete, occasionally a child's toy.
- Map confidence
- high - approximate territory centroid (mining 2026)
- Source location
Page references
p. 11 (item 31; Fig. 5) | PRM 1902.88.100
- Toy / secular survival