mongolian bulu throwing club?

[ausjulius]

well today i was searching about throwing clubs in various cultures and it crossed my mind they seem to be used almost universally by steppe and grasslands nomadic peoples..

this crossed my mind that i did recall seeing mention about club making in Bhutan.. in one mention it seemed that the clubs may have been thrown although ive never seen any example or eve a description of how one looks..
not generally a place for throwing clubs but it crossed my mine that Tibet is right next door and in fact its one large open plain..

so the search for tibetian throwing clubs began.. without much luck..
now .... i though ok maybe they do and maybe they dont have throwing clubs there..
but i think its just to isolated a region for an internet search..
so it crossed my mind .. mongolian throwing clubs!! theyve got open grass plains..
but ive known a few mongolians and ive never heard of anything so quaint or traditional as a thrown club.. .22 rifles and sks carbines and whats used and beofre that flint lock guns for many 100s of years for hunting.. bows being only for games..
well not to be deterred i figured well there is a even bigger population of mongolians on the chinese side and theyer far more isolated.. so i didnt ome mongolian internet searches throwing club.. no luck.. different dialect of mongolian is used in those areas anyway.. ahhh but a search in chinese ideograms... and would you belive persistance had payed indeed..
much to my surprise there is quite a lively club and boomerang tradition in inner mongolia..

there seems to be several styles including one very unique almost flail like throwing club.. there appears even to be organized competitions for it..

i can see 5 rather distinct types and one type is clearly thin and with an aerofoil like a boomerang..much to my fascination and amazement!!!
now if only i can get some examples of these tools!!!

in one article it mentions a range of about 100 meters approximate with many aboriginal hunting boomerangs ..

seems the general name is bulu.. at least in chinese ideograms... although correct mongolian name may or may not be something different.. on asking a mongolian aquaintance versed in hunting and firearms if hed ever see this thing , the reply was -never head of it looks like something from australia!!


i guess its why weapons are so interesting every time you look something different can be found..

here is some articles
http://kaleidoscope.cultural-china.c...scope1747.html

http://www.whb.cn/zhuzhan/jiaodian/20150818/35533.html

http://www.zgbfly.gov.cn/E_ReadNews.asp?newsid=13274

http://rapple.blog.163.com/blog/stat...1192861934852/

http://history.bayvoice.net/b5/mscs/...%E5%9C%96.html

http://theory.people.com.cn/n/2014/0...-25264771.html

[ariel]

Ha!

Outstanding job!
Intelligent hypothesis, pointed search and informative result.

My hat is off to you!

[ausjulius]

thanks... and you know it truly panned out how i described!!..
actually it started with be looking at some plains indians throwing sticks and then that brought back the bhutan club related memory..

now ive got to get some examples of these throwing clubs some how!!!
i wounder how far the weighted one with the lead ball on in a leather strap goes.. id have though it would fly rather poorly.. ??



im going to try to get one of these some how..

there is a russian from china -from khokh khot, inner mongolia living not far from here maybe i will ask if hes seen such a item.. .

[Tim Simmons]

Very interesting. Wanting to add something to this thread I am adding some Native American throwing sticks with the text from "Indian & Eskimo Artifacts of North America, Charles Miles 1967 Bonanza Books"

Rabbit sticks of boomerang type (but not returning) (1.60) top to bottom, three historic-period Southwest types, two with boomerang curves and one (maybe a loom batten) with propeller twist; and three prehistoric types, two grooved, Basket-maker types and a California stick from a San Bernardino County cave; (1.61) close-ups of two historic rabbit stick handles, Navaho and Hopi, and two prehistoric Basketmaker grooved types (Note repair reinforcements of sinew, and wire lashing.)
Rabbit sticks were thrown with the inside curve to the victim and their shapes caused them to bounce and jump instead of sliding. The Australian returning sticks united curve, propeller twist, and cambered cross sections to achieve these properties.

I have added the text as written. When the author say pre-historic he means pre white settlement rather than earlier. Unless he has made a mistake about the one with wire on the repair. African throwing sticks are much more dramatic in form. Hopefully more will be added.

[blue lander]

Interesting! I showed your links to some Mongolians, none of them had ever heard of it. Inner Mongolia and Outer Mongolia are inhabited by different tribes, perhaps only the ones in Inner Mongolia used these clubs.

[blue lander]

I showed them to my Mongolian wife, she has heard of them but never saw them used. She thinks they're called tsuihayah but she's not sure on the spelling. Nothing comes up if you google it.

[Timo Nieminen]

Yet another region where boomerangs have been used! Not just Australia, India, Egypt/Ethiopia, and North America, but also Mongolia. (Does anybody has further additions to the list?

Some more boomerang stuff:
Pitt Rivers and the boomerang: http://england.prm.ox.ac.uk/englishn...echnology.html
Indian steel boomerang: http://www.oriental-arms.co.il/item.php?id=558

[ausjulius]

Originally Posted by blue lander

Interesting! I showed your links to some Mongolians, none of them had ever heard of it. Inner Mongolia and Outer Mongolia are inhabited by different tribes, perhaps only the ones in Inner Mongolia used these clubs.

yes in mongolia they dont have these for sure.. i mentioned i asked a mongolian friend well versed in these things and he said a snaphaunce style flintlock of local make in many styles and sizes had been used since the 17th or 18th century or there about for just about all purposes of hunting.
also Mongolians from the mongolian republic are not so familiar with bows for hunting either and seems to have stopped using them a long time ago for anything but sport.. .
it seems they accepted firearms quite rapidly probably due to a long although minimal contact with russians.. (probably explained why outer mongolian firearms are much superior to tibetian.. chinese ect rather more crude matchlocks... and that inner mongolia also matchlocks seem to have been common too.. well into the 20th century )
while inner mongolia bows remained popular right until the 20th century, they still have many bow makers there,
im sure these throwing sticks existed in mongolia at some time as well but it must have been a long time ago..

what im wondering is if there is some other ethnic minorities in the PRC that have other forms of throwing club like this .. maybe tibet or other isolated areas where more reliable modern firearms didnt enter till the 20 century..

come to think of it .. ive never seen a papuan throwing club...

about african throwing clubs ... the southern sudanese ones seem to be by far the best and most nicely made..

[ausjulius]

Originally Posted by blue lander

I showed them to my Mongolian wife, she has heard of them but never saw them used. She thinks they're called tsuihayah but she's not sure on the spelling. Nothing comes up if you google it.

yeah there must be a khalkha name for them for sure (khalkha is the language use don most of the mongolian internetz.. or buryat)... even if they didnt use them for 300 years or so its like we still have a word for a halberd.. even though we havent used them in along time..
but it depends on what ethnic group your wife is from . maybe ask her to write it in cyrillic khalkha there might be something on the net???
anyway if i cant get one of thee ill try to make one especially with the weighted ball. im curious how it flys.

[ausjulius]

Originally Posted by Timo Nieminen

Yet another region where boomerangs have been used! Not just Australia, India, Egypt/Ethiopia, and North America, but also Mongolia. (Does anybody has further additions to the list?

Some more boomerang stuff:
Pitt Rivers and the boomerang: http://england.prm.ox.ac.uk/englishn...echnology.html
Indian steel boomerang: http://www.oriental-arms.co.il/item.php?id=558

actual boomerang like weapons
the maori had a flat throwing club long and like a propeller , named hoeroa,
these were weapons though large and of wood or whale bone. this weapon is throing like a boomerang.

[blue lander]

I showed the pictures to another group of older Mongolians - they said the sticks were Chinese and the people throwing them were Chinese too even though there's a wall scroll of Genghis Khan in the background of one of the pictures. Many Outer Mongolians don't consider Inner Mongolians to be "real" Mongolian because they're culturally Chinese, maybe that's what they meant. It's also very well possible any memory of the sport was lost during Soviet times.

[ausjulius]

Originally Posted by blue lander

I showed the pictures to another group of older Mongolians - they said the sticks were Chinese and the people throwing them were Chinese too even though there's a wall scroll of Genghis Khan in the background of one of the pictures. Many Outer Mongolians don't consider Inner Mongolians to be "real" Mongolian because they're culturally Chinese, maybe that's what they meant. It's also very well possible any memory of the sport was lost during Soviet times.

im ot sure i understand what you mean by culturally chinese.. inner mongoian mongols speak mongolian and marry pretty much only other mongolian people ,live separately from the chinese migrants. eat different food and they (unlike people in mongolian) still use and read mongolian script.. they dont have much in common with chinese except that their existence is in the hands of the PRC government.. and maybey a strong mutual dislike for each other.

the chinggis khan statue in china is just regular ethnic propaganda.. they do this in eveny ethnic minority region, dai minority region has lots of pagodas and such, turkmen have their own state sanctioned monuments ect ect. just as was done in the soviet union... (well maybe a little more crudely..although the pretense of brotherly fraternity the soviets had is not even there in china. its basically build statue for native and then move to next 5 year plan.. )



these things are defiantly not chinese.. sure people throwing them might have been chinese but in the articles when translated they are clearly saying they are used by Mongolian minority at their naadam festivals and also untill recent times from hunting.. some of the images seem at a university on some sites so there id guess most would be chinese as mongolians are a small minority in their own land these days.. but it is clearly not mentioned to be anything Chinese .. buy the chinese who were writing these articles. and its mentioned clearly as some ethno curiosity.

mongolins in inner mongolia are far more traditional when compared to mongolians in mongolia.. and russia, poorer country, less developed, less outside contact. just like kazakhs in kazakhstan compared to kazakhs in mongloia or china.ther eis nobody hunting with eagle in kazakhstan and no blacksmith tool or knife makers ect while kazakhs in china still were making and using swords and firearms last 50 years, still hunt with eagles and still make many household items by hand..
in inner mongolia they were until 1945 very must in a feudal state, unlike mongolia.. . and since then had many chinese migrants settled by force on their land, such situation can preserve some ethno customs in the face of persecution.
its likely that there is lots of customs that Mongolians in mongolia would consider very odd or backward or not know about..might be quite common there..