Rare Dayak Daggers - Sadop and Dohong

[VVV]

Ben,

Thanks for sharing an additional example of this rare parang.
I agree that the handle of your example looks closer to the illustration in Blink.
It's a pity that the pictures in the Shelford article are so poor.

Michael

[Dajak]

Hi Michael this one is from the time they have no pics That s why you see no picture off it .
But the mandau from your friend is great I only wanna say that the handle is maybe replaced or the weapon was later than the example from blink.
Having an mandau like this is very rare and your friend have something real special .
the pics in shelford very difficult to see but the classification is nice .
Don t forget the pakayun the type we both have that is in it that is also important for dating after 1900 the fork handle was in use (or the one we have was only for special people) .
I will have something special in an few weeks I will post it here
never see anything like it .

[Mytribalworld]

Originally Posted by Dajak

Hi Michael this one is from the time they have no pics That s why you see no picture off it .
But the mandau from your friend is great I only wanna say that the handle is maybe replaced or the weapon was later than the example from blink.
Having an mandau like this is very rare and your friend have something real special .
the pics in shelford very difficult to see but the classification is nice .
Don t forget the pakayun the type we both have that is in it that is also important for dating after 1900 the fork handle was in use (or the one we have was only for special people) .
I will have something special in an few weeks I will post it here
never see anything like it .

Hi Mikael,

does the blade fits good in the scabbard? its seems to me like a double edged blade but the scabbard look like a single edged.

[VVV]

Hi Arjan,

Welcome to the forum.
It's not my blade but I know that it fits the scabbard from visiting Karsten. It hangs on his Borneo wall in its scabbard.
But I agree that the scabbard looks like a regular mandau scabbard.

Michael

[Dajak]

Hi Arjan can you look up for the Item numbers what date they came into the museum



Ben

[David]

Wow!!! Michael and Ben, excellent blades. I just want to thank both you guys for your continued efforts to shed light on the Dayak world. I only have one Dayak weapon but find these blades very interesting. Keep up the great work.

[Mytribalworld]

Originally Posted by Dajak

Hi Arjan can you look up for the Item numbers what date they came into the museum



Ben

Hi Ben,

will do in the next weeks I will visit the archives of leiden and will look for that.
between my articles I found this about a bayu wich was collected by Bier during the expedition with Nieuwenhuis.
the article if from Stingl " Schwerter aus Zentral Kalimantan.
jahrbuch des museums fur volkerkunde Leipzig 1969
its a very good study, also because Nieuwenhuis/Bier was almost the only one who gave good descriptions when they collected and mentioned ,place,name of the tribe etc.
sadly the pics are quite bad.

Arjan.

[VVV]

Thanks for posting another example of this rare sword.
I noticed that the scabbard of the Bier Bayu resembles the one of Karsten's (looks more like a regular mandau scabbard than having the profile of the Bayu blade).
Also the hilt looks more like a regular mandau hilt than the variation of Ben's example and the one in Blink (illustration below as a reference).
In the Leiden catalogues two Dayak tribes are referred to; "Kajahan" (Kayan?) for the one with regular mandau antler hilt and "Bejadju" for the one with a wooden hilt. The picture of the one with wooden hilt is unfortunately not that good so I am insecure if it's related to the Blink version?
In Shelford's article the Bayu is classified as a Sea-Dayak sword but I doubt that this is the case?However he describes his example as having a regular mandau hilt.
Do you think that the hilt form variations are tribal or maybe they are age indicators?
Or maybe all Bayu are Kayan and the note in the catalogue is wrong?

Michael