Origin of the Tombak?

[khalifah muda]

Originally Posted by BigG

It'll would be good if khalifah Muda can show his tombak stems and bases too...

Well BigG, the base and stem is just a normal finish, no frills or brass fittings.

[BigG]

Originally Posted by khalifah muda

Well BigG, the base and stem is just a normal finish, no frills or brass fittings.

The shape of the stem is what I am looking for.. If only Jentayu would show pics of his excellent collection of Malay tombaks & lembings especialy their decorative features on the stems and the shapes of those stems..

[katana]

Hi Bill,
I am wondering whether this has anything to do with the naming of Tombaks..........

".....Tombac, as spelled in French, or Tombak is a brass alloy with high copper content and 5-20% zinc content..............The term tombak derives from the Javanese derived Indonesian (erroneously termed Malay) word tembaga- meaning copper. Tembaga entered Dutch usage concurrent with their colonisation of Indonesia (see Dutch East Indies). Likely, the term was used generically to describe Indonesian high-copper brass items, including gamelan gongs. It is one of the very few Indonesian or Malay loan words used in English, German or Dutch.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tombac

Perhaps, its simply due to brass decoration

Kind Regards David

[Bill M]

David, can't quite make the jump. Copper?

[Sajen]

Here my tombaks. The first two are from Java and the third one I think from Bali.

[katana]

Originally Posted by Bill M

David, can't quite make the jump. Copper?

Hi Bill ,
I was researching brass/bronze alloys and came across this information. Because of the linguistist use of 'tombak' (Javanese)to describe this alloy, I thought I would include it here......the reasoning is, that from I can see, there seems to be no definitive description of what makes a tombak different to a lembing. A number of formites believe that a tombak, by definition has methuk ....which are, in my very limited experience, often made from a brass like alloy.....perhaps this was more common in earlier times....and as a descriptive term tombak was used to describe a spear with methuk....perhaps, for instance they could have been originally called a tombak lembing / lembing tombak ....which was gradually shortened to just tombak.

It was just a though.....which may or may not 'create' other avenues for discussion.

All the best
Regards David