Mandau pommel representation?

[migueldiaz]

Originally Posted by Battara

Oh..I don't know about that. The Philippines has a long tradition of great carving as well. Take a look sometime at the okir tombstones of the Sulu islands. And then there are the Maranao building carvings in okir.

I don't know if you are a Tagalog, but at one time we may have had such artwork too.

I also noticed in the pictures there were women that looked like they were doing a version of tinikling dance. Truly they are cousins to Filipinos.

Hey Battara, I was just being cute when I said I was born into the wrong tribe

That remark of mine is supposed to refer (tongue in cheek) to the pic where we see two men, very relaxed, while being attended to by their sweethearts.

Each region in southeast Asia is of course known for their own unique (but interrelated) culture. And each can be very proud of his/her heritage.

And a little off-topic, yes I am a Tagalog (Batangas on my mother's side and Pampanga-Nueva Ecija on the paternal side) ... and as a Filipino I am very proud of the history and culture of the country

Back to the topic ... as you also mentioned the links amongst the various southeast Asian ethnolinguistic groups are very intimate.

Again, I'd like to cite as evidence linguistics -- the Philippine word for headhunting or raiding or warfare (i.e., kayaw, pronounced kah-yao, the last syllable rhymes with cow) is almost the same throughout the region (Taiwan, Phils., Malaysia, Indonesia, etc., i.e., the Austronesian world), as we can see in this excerpt from a paper:

*maN-: PAn or PMP??-II

Blust (1999: 68, footnote 14): “Prominent examples include Puyuma [Taiwan aborigine] /mangayaw/ ‘to hunt heads’, a form which is synchronically unanalyzable, but is seen to have a historical prefix *maN- by comparison with Isneg ['Igorot'/ Phils.] /kayaw/ ‘headhunting’: /ma-ngayaw/ ‘to hunt heads’, Western Bukidnon Manobo [Mindanao, Phils.]/kayew/ ‘be in readiness of fight, be in array’: /me-ngayew/ ‘a raider’: /pe-ngayew/ ‘to raid a house or village in order to kill someone’, Kayan (Uma Juman dialect) [Borneo, Indonesia portion] /kayo/ ‘post-harvest ceremony for the ritual purification of weapons’: /ngayo/ ‘go to war, hunt heads’, Iban [Sarawak, Malaysia] /kayau/ ‘raiding, war, foray because of a feud, head- hunting’: /ngayau/ ‘make war on, go on a foray’, and POc [proto-Oceanic] *panako ‘steal’, a form which is synchronically unanalyzable in many Oc [Oceanic] languages, but which is seen to have a historical prefix *paN- by comparison with Aklanon [Panay Is., Phils.] /takaw/ ‘steal’: /pa-nakw/ ‘theft’ or Toba Batak [northern Sumatra] /tangko/ ‘theft’: /pa-nangko/ ‘thief’.”

*maN-: PAn or PMP??-III ␣ Isnag / Isneg [northern Luzon, Phils.]

(a) ŋáyaw ‘headhunting’ (Rudy Barlaan, pers. comm. 2008)

(b) agngangáyaw (< ag-CV-ngáyaw): ‘the time of headhunting’ (Vanoverbergh 1972)

Bugkalot / Ilongot [northern Luzon, Phils.] (Liao 2008)

(a) sit (t)a ŋáyo(v)an: one Lig headhunting; ‘a group of people going for headhunting in one place’ [Belance, Quirino, Aurora]

(b) ŋáyo(v)ɨn=dɨ=ydɨ no: buvat. headhunt=Gen.3p=Nom.3p Lcv tomorrow ‘They will headhunt against them tomorrow.’

The above dump is a bit jumbled but in essence, kayaw is almost the same word with the same meaning in Malaysia and Indonesia (i.e., in Borneo).

Which leads us back to the mandau and its hilt form, as it relates to headhunting, which headhunting activity was not unique to Borneo, but was widely practiced in the southeast Asia portion of Austronesia.

Thus when I posed the query as to the possible representation of the mandau hilt, I was also thinking of its possible explanatory power to the hilt forms of the wider formerly-headhunting Austronesian world

PS - Does anybody know the root word or meaning of the Bornean word, Ngaju? Perhaps it's also related to ngayaw (verb form of the noun kayaw).