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Lot 682
Sword "penai"
Estimated Value:
3.000 € - 5.000 €
Result:
incl. Premium and VAT
Description:
Sulawesi, Indonesia, Bare'e-Toraja, 18th or early 19th cent.L. 67,5 cm
Steel, wood, horn. A very expressive weapon that can be attributed to the Bare'e-speaking Toraja of South Sulawesi. It belongs to the group of so-called penai. The sword has a one-piece handle made of water buffalo horn (kerbau) with a large, angled, flat pommel that is remotely reminiscent of an animal head but has a very abstract appearance. As the size and grain show, the angled shape was achieved by heating and bending over long periods of time, which requires perfect mastery of the material (inferior examples sometimes show cracks and splitting). Interestingly, the ‘eccentric’ shape in no way conflicts with the usability of the sword, which is handy and quite practical. The foot of the handle is typically thickened. The blade shows a coarse refined structure and no constructive design, it can probably be attributed to the 18th century or even older. A brittle fracture in the point area shows that it has been hardened. The two-part wooden scabbard is held together by rattan straps. It is thickened on the obverse side in the area of the centre of gravity and fitted with a carrying device (holes for cotton or bark bast string). The pommel and scabbard show ornamental fields characterised by spirals and braided bands as well as groupings of serrated lines. These are found in identical form on the known sarcophagi of the Toraja and can be traced back directly to Dong So'n ornamentation or Bronze Age decorative forms, whereby the spiral ornaments can be described as ‘real’ spirals and not, as with the Dayak, as ‘suspended’ double spirals (further developed meander and volute bands based on the Central Chinese / Inner Asian model). The spiral symbolises the path to the underworld and back, i.e. the cyclical renewal of life and fertility.
Collected from an old German private collection since the 1950s
Swords are sacred objects in Tana Toraja. Particularly among the East Toraja (Bare'e), who have been regarded as the ‘blacksmith people’ since time immemorial, special importance is attached to iron. The name Sulawesi also derives from sula besi, ‘iron island’. Swords still have spiritual significance today. Annual ceremonies serve to neutralise the ‘power of iron’ (isi waja) and the ‘spirits of the forge’. Tana Toraja, a term commonly used since the early 20th century for the highlanders of the ‘Southeast Sulawesi’ region, derives from the Buginese term to riaja, ‘people of the mountains’. The interior of Sulawesi (formerly known as ‘Celebes’) rises in places to well over 3000 metres above sea level. Today there are around 1,100,000 members of the large ethnogenetic group ‘To-Raja’, around half of whom live in the Tana Toraja regency. Rare old sword of high artistic quality
