Recensie / Review
Traditional weapons of the Indonesian archipelago
In / in: Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 159 (2003), no: 1, Leiden
Door / by: David van Duuren
This book is an ambitious attempt to classify the enormous variety of defensive, offensive and ceremonial weapons of Indonesia. This is, in fact, an almost impossible task. Most of the - very fragmentary - information which is available on the traditional weapons of the archipelago consists of passing comments and brief descriptions in old publications written by all kinds of authors: nineteenth-century travellers and ethnographers, Indologists, military historians, museum curators. In recent times there has also been an increasing number of publications on the subject by fascinated collectors, not to mention the self-appointed 'experts' who have won their own places in the apparently attractive world of exotic weaponry. Van Zonneveld has managed to unravel this tangle of heterogeneous sources and his inventory is as complete as is possible. Traditional weapons of the Indonesian archipelago is an alphabetically ordered survey with hundreds of lemmas and illustrations beginning with the agang, a leather shield from western Flores, and ending with the wedung, a ceremonial machete from Central Java. However, the information which it contains may also be accessed by using the interesting additional key, which resembles a key to botanical flora. The author's starting point is that the provenance of each unknown sword or knife must be determined, and it must be named. He uses the blade as the criterion for this purpose and begins with a schematic summary of all possible relationships between the edge, back and tip. Using his 75 possible combinations it appears to be quite easy to establish whether the dagger in one's hand is a rencong from Aceh or a sadop from Kalimantan. Quite an achievement!
I would stress that this is not an anthropological study of traditional Indonesian weapons comparable to recent anthropological studies of traditional Indonesian textiles or architecture. The author has avoided focused research into specific islands, ethnic groups or local cultural traditions. Given the continuing - but nonetheless strange - lack of interest in Indonesian weapons from anthropologists, Van Zonneveld could hardly build on recent work by other authors and consequently had to start at the beginning himself, wading through the obscure descriptions and innumerable spelling
changes in his chaotic 'raw material' to discover and classify the weapons and establish their names. This excellent reference book, with its formal and exact descriptions, will appeal first and foremost to those who need to identify the weapons concerned: curators in anthropological museums, weapon collectors, and probably also dealers in ethnographic objects.
My minor criticism is that the book contains no classification of defensive weapons. Although there are fairly extensive general lemmas on shields, helmets and cuirasses, the reader can only find these by leafing right through the book. However, this does not detract from the fact that in this book we have an indispensable encyclopaedia of old Indonesian weapons, most of which are now no longer manufactured. The presentation of the book is its best advertisement: the beautiful, previously unpublished photographs, including real showpieces, of weapons from private collections and from the collection of the Ethnographical Museum in Leiden, as well as the old drawings and field photos, ensure that Traditional weapons of the Indonesian archipelago is not just a very useful reference book, but also a feast for the eye.
In / in: Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 159 (2003), no: 1, Leiden
Door / by: David van Duuren
This book is an ambitious attempt to classify the enormous variety of defensive, offensive and ceremonial weapons of Indonesia. This is, in fact, an almost impossible task. Most of the - very fragmentary - information which is available on the traditional weapons of the archipelago consists of passing comments and brief descriptions in old publications written by all kinds of authors: nineteenth-century travellers and ethnographers, Indologists, military historians, museum curators. In recent times there has also been an increasing number of publications on the subject by fascinated collectors, not to mention the self-appointed 'experts' who have won their own places in the apparently attractive world of exotic weaponry. Van Zonneveld has managed to unravel this tangle of heterogeneous sources and his inventory is as complete as is possible. Traditional weapons of the Indonesian archipelago is an alphabetically ordered survey with hundreds of lemmas and illustrations beginning with the agang, a leather shield from western Flores, and ending with the wedung, a ceremonial machete from Central Java. However, the information which it contains may also be accessed by using the interesting additional key, which resembles a key to botanical flora. The author's starting point is that the provenance of each unknown sword or knife must be determined, and it must be named. He uses the blade as the criterion for this purpose and begins with a schematic summary of all possible relationships between the edge, back and tip. Using his 75 possible combinations it appears to be quite easy to establish whether the dagger in one's hand is a rencong from Aceh or a sadop from Kalimantan. Quite an achievement!
I would stress that this is not an anthropological study of traditional Indonesian weapons comparable to recent anthropological studies of traditional Indonesian textiles or architecture. The author has avoided focused research into specific islands, ethnic groups or local cultural traditions. Given the continuing - but nonetheless strange - lack of interest in Indonesian weapons from anthropologists, Van Zonneveld could hardly build on recent work by other authors and consequently had to start at the beginning himself, wading through the obscure descriptions and innumerable spelling
changes in his chaotic 'raw material' to discover and classify the weapons and establish their names. This excellent reference book, with its formal and exact descriptions, will appeal first and foremost to those who need to identify the weapons concerned: curators in anthropological museums, weapon collectors, and probably also dealers in ethnographic objects.
My minor criticism is that the book contains no classification of defensive weapons. Although there are fairly extensive general lemmas on shields, helmets and cuirasses, the reader can only find these by leafing right through the book. However, this does not detract from the fact that in this book we have an indispensable encyclopaedia of old Indonesian weapons, most of which are now no longer manufactured. The presentation of the book is its best advertisement: the beautiful, previously unpublished photographs, including real showpieces, of weapons from private collections and from the collection of the Ethnographical Museum in Leiden, as well as the old drawings and field photos, ensure that Traditional weapons of the Indonesian archipelago is not just a very useful reference book, but also a feast for the eye.
