Tilang Kamerau
 

At home and bored while recuperating from some form of " plague"
Reading through past posts and trying to match up some of my collection with some of yours. I.E " playing the name game "

Have re-read Banks article on Hoplology of Sarawak.

Due to the (dubious ?) miracle that is Facebook I recently made contact with an ex workmate who is now married and living in Kota Kinabalu, Sabah.
His wife, her friends and some of his workmates ( guys from Sabah, Sarawak and Brunei ) have been trying to find a meaning for " Tilang Kamerau" for me.

Too much success so far, there appears to be too many variants within the different languages and dialects of Borneo. None of them can agree with each other even to the extent of Sabah Ibans saying it is Sarawak Iban and vice versa.

Does anyone here know exactly which dialect the words are ?
Or even know the meaning.
Regards
Roy

Hullo Roy,

The silence is deafening ......

I plead guilty.
Therefore, please accept my humblest apologies.
Unfortunately, I am constrained by certain sensibilities.
However, very generally speaking, I can say that your term refers to a type of fish that migrates overland in times of drought/during prolonged dry seasons.
Although my spelling of the term may be slightly different, I am not in a position to suggest any correction (allowing for variation in regional spelling/pronunciation ).
May I suggest that your friends try to seek counsel from a Saribas manang bali, or even a Skrang manang bali?

'nuff said! ;)

Best,

That is an interesting suggestion Amuk, but does it apply to the languages spoken in Sarawak, Brunei, Sabah?

I do not doubt your knowledge of these languages, its just that I do not know.

If this "tilang kamerau" were Javanese usage, we could understand it in two different ways:- "tilang" is a variant pronunciation of "hilang" = "lost", "disappeared", "vanished"; "kamerau" is a variant pronunciation of "kemarau" = "dry season" ( can also mean the dry bottom of a boat after bailing), "tilang" also has the colloquial meaning of any sort of police ticket, like a traffic infringement ticket or similar.

So, "tilang kamerau" could be understood as "a dry season speeding ticket" --- pretty unlikely for a weapon name, or "the dry season has disappeared" --- possibly quite appropriate for a weapon name.

But this would be Javanese usage, not North Borneo.

Hullo Alan,

Using 'gun analogy': I always try a 'sharp-shooter' rather than a 'blunderbuss' approach.
Thus what I have written above pertains only to the subject in question AND 'understood' by the protagonists/locals. Manangs are usually the best source of traditional knowledge. (My ancestor advised that to learn about metals, consult an mpu; to learn about wood, consult a maranggi ;) ). Certainly, I am aware of all that you have brought up, but I could see no relevance in including them in my writing. Rather, it would simply add confusion.

BTW ..... being a expert, were you to have the weapon in question in your hands to play with, you will no doubt come to realise why it was named thus.

Best,

Thanks Amuk.

You are of course correct in that if what I wrote were to be offered as a definitive response to the original question, it would be totally irrelevant and could cause confusion, however, it was not presented as such. Rather I posted the Javanese meanings as an illustration of the relationships between the languages in this part of the world.

Incidentally, I am not an expert in anything, most especially in anything at all associated with mandaus, however, you have raised my interest in the reason why this particular type of mandau is named thus, could you please oblige with an explanation? Thanks.

While I'm asking questions, could you please oblige by telling me what a "manang bali" is. Thanks again.

Thanks Alan and Amuk

Interestly my mates wife says that Kamerau means dry season in Sarawak iban
I notice that musim kemarau is dry season in Bahasa Indonesia.
Were you using Bahasa or Jawi Alun?

The lads from Sarawak at first said it is Sabah iban but then relented by saying that if you change the spelling a little to Hilang Kemarau you would get a Hilang( some sort of sword) belonging to a person named Kemarau.

None of this looks likely, except perhaps for Hilang.


I await more communications from a drillship somewhere in the south china sea.
If they are not forthcomming I might well suggest a "Shamen", Amuk

Roy

Royston, when I wrote my post I was actually using basa daerah Solo, that is, ngoko as it is spoken in Solo, which is a corrupt form of ngoko, the lowest level of Javanese. My point in writing the post was to try to demonstrate that words occur in different languages and dialects with slightly different spellings and slightly different meanings.

The languages of Maritime SE Asia are a sub-group of the Austronesian group of language and are known as the Malayo-Polynesian languages. This language group includes, but is not limited to, Malay, Indonesian, Javanese, Balinese, Achinese, as well as the languages spoken across the Pacific, such as Fijian, Hawaiian, and Maori.

Interestingly, a lot of the cultural practices and beliefs that we find in SE Asia can also be found in Polynesian culture and society.

So, when we eventually find out exactly what 'tilang kamerau' actually does mean, we will very probably be able to find very similar words with very similar meanings in other languages of the group.

Hullo Alan,
YW.
I normally try not to engage in discussion which I feel can go on " 'til the cows come home". I usually just leave 'skyhooks' that interested parties can use for further research to their own satisfaction, should they so wish.
As a mark of my respect for you, I will answer your queries.

Basically, like the creature it is named after, it is short/small, light and quite effective.
The blade is curved upwards like a cavalry sabre, but with the blade having a reversed profile-taper (widens to the tip) and quite narrow at the handle end. Approx. 1/3-1/4 from the tip the back-edge slopes down to a point. Except for at the beginning and at the end of the slope (where there is a more sudden drop/curve), the slope is quite gentle. Unlike the usual mandau it was mainly used as a sword, as it would be next to useless as a chopper. Occidentals often mistake such an item for a "child's " weapon.

Manang bali is the third and highest order of priests. They, like the other priests, are the guardians of their culture and are probably the only people who still know Basa Sangiang.

BTW Roy,

Hilang/Ihlang/Ilang/Illang is merely the the Kenjah word for 'knife' which has been misinterpreted/mistranslated/adapted/adopted.

I am quietly confident in my knowledge. However, as always, I am open to persuasion by incontrovertible evidence. :)

That will be all.

Best,

Alan / Amuk

Thanks very much.

Roy

Thank you Amuk.

Dear Amuk,

Am I overlooking something in the previous posts ?

Which creature are you referring to ?

Best regards,
Willem

Hi Roy,

As far as I know the only source who ever mentioned the name ' Tilang Kemarau ' was Schelford who described a sword of Batang Lupar origin which he donated to the Pitt Rivers museum. ( Heppell, two curators a classification of Borneo swords and some swords in the Sarawak museum collection) Banks followed the description of Schelford so if I understand correctly the whole naming of swords of the Tilang Kemarau type started with this one and only case. Maybe that was correctly described but its a quite narrow base.....


I just found and old Malay-Dutch translation for the word " Kamarau" what simply means " fraai"or "helder" Transl to English " fine" or " bright".
That seems to me a quite more plausible translation than " dry season" or is the word kamerau referring to the brightness of the sky when it means dry season ?

source translation : Tijdschrift voor Neerland's Indië jrg 9, 1847 (1e deel) [volgno 2]

regards,

Arjan

Thanks for that additional information Arjan.

In respect of "kamerau", this is a very common word in Malay, Indonesian, and Javanese. True, the vowels are inconsistent, but this is a characteristic of these languages, especially Javanese, which is linguistically classified as a non-standardised language. It would surprise me if "kemarau" in variant spellings was not found in a multitude of languages and dialects throughout SE Asia.

Common usage of the word is "musim kemarau" = "dry season".

so if I understand correctly nowadays its always a two word combination with the word "musim " ( season) ?

regards,

Arjan..

No Arjan, not always, but it is the usage that you hear most, simply because the year is split in two:- dry season and wet season. The word does have other applications, but the opportunity for those applications is very much less than reference to half of each year.

Ok, so due to that most used combi I think its the modern Bahassa for dry season while the old Malay style is " bright /nice season"

I know of three usages for the word "kemarau".

1) to be without money, to be broke; in my experience this is not a common usage

2) dry, when talking about something that was wet, but is now dry, such as the bottom of a boat when it was previously covered with water

3) dry, when applied to the weather, commonly a season, when it becomes "musim kemarau", but it can also be applied to a dry spell occurring at a time other than the dry season.

I have never once encountered its use to refer to "bright" weather, in fact, the dry season in SE Asia is very, very far from being "nice". The coming of the monsoon is something that is welcomed, not its disappearance.

It is true that the way in which a word is understood can change, but for the word "kemarau" to have been understood as "bright" seems to me to be improbable. Still, anything is possible.

One further note on this matter.

The standard reference for Classical Malay, ie, the Malay used in the old literary works, is Wilkinson's Malay-English Dictionary.

Wilkinson lists "kemarau" as:- "a drought, a period of continuous absence of rain", his reference is the Hikayat Abdullah

yep, I understand that only Malay- English translations are taken serious :)
anyway, below the Malay- Dutch translation ( . its from 1847 , the Wilkinson is from 60 years later, I don't know if that could make a difference.....

Wilkinson was not working from current usage, but from literary sources and scholarly input. His dictionary is relevant to Classical Malay, rather than Market Malay. Of course many words are used in both forms of the language, but Wilkinson is still the dictionary text for studies of Classical Malay. He drew on sources that in fact pre-dated the 1847 word list.

More than a few of these word lists seem to have been produced, the ones I've seen have been mostly Javanese, but quality and accuracy of many of them does sometimes raise some questions.

Both "helder" and "fraai" appear to have multiple meanings, dependent upon context, I have no understanding of Dutch at all, but I've had a look at a couple of dictionaries, and this seems to be the case. The usage of "fine" (fraai) appears to refer to a measure of quality, rather than in the context of weather. To my mind, this makes the word list translation even more worthy of question.

It did not occur to me previously, but "tilang" also appears in Classical Malay, not as "tilang", but as "tilan" = "a small river fish like an eel"

As text is describing a sword it is somewhat more plausible that "tilang" stands for "Ilang" the common dayak word for his sword.

Yes, I agree, I did consider raising the possibility of "ilang", but I do not know of a pronunciation of 'ilang' that uses a 'T' sound in front of the ilang, whereas an 'n' at the end of a word is sometimes given a 'g' sound, this is particularly common in Old Javanese, it is not exactly represented as a 'g', but when the Old Javanese word has come into Modern Javanese, the OJ "N" sometimes gains a MJ "G". I thought a similar thing might have applied with Malay.

But having said that I do not know of such a pronunciation, doesn't mean very much in this context, because my knowledge is pretty much limited to Jawa/Bali/Madura. Pronunciations of all words in these languages can and do vary all over the place, even today, people will vary a pronunciation simply to make the words sound better. In Jawa, people consider that they own the words that they use, and provided the other party understands, or appears to understand what is being said, they are not too particular with precise pronunciations. A similar attitude could apply in other areas also.

If there is only the one mention 'tilang' in old sources, it is possible that the original information was misunderstood, possibly because of imperfect knowledge of Malay on the part of the original information gatherer, or perhaps because of the sentence structure that the information was given in.

On the other hand, the fish concerned could, with a stretch of the imagination, vaguely resemble the particular weapon under discussion:- Macrognathus maculatus.

Arjan, I had not realised that Banks was quoting Schelford. How accurate was he ? As Alan says, did he hear it wrong or misunderstand what he heard ? One reference is not much to go on is it ?
Roy

Hi Roy,

both articles are certainly worth to read and contain worth full information but good information was sometimes scarves and so the writer(s) had to relay on one single source. Than you can easily makes mistakes.
Schelford was writing in 1901 while Banks wrote his article about 30 years later and between the lines in the Banks article you can see that. Some information isn't correct but otherwise the subject of the blade shapes ( usong) is very useful. Heppel reviewed these articles quite recent and also that article give some good info but also Heppell on his turn isn't perfect and there are also some mistakes in it. But all with all respect for all 3.

About mistakes, I'will try to add the pictures of the TK. And then we see that or the description is wrong, or the tag is wrong or.........

TILANG KAMARAN !
:confused: :confused:

Interesting.

So we are talking about the scabbard, not talking about the sword, and the name of the scabbard is tilang kamaran.

Kamaran comes from the root "kamar", now commonly understood as "a room".

In Classical Malay there are several meanings for "kamar":- a room, a cabin, an upstairs room; a scarf, a girdle; the moon.

These were taken straight from Wilkinson, the common usage that we all know is "a room", the other usages I've never heard of, but it is Wilkinson, so it is correct. I think "kamar" comes from the Dutch "kamer" = "a room".

The suffix "an" could have been used to indicate something associated with a room, but not a room. For example, "bangun" is to "wake up, to get up", but "bangunan" is a building: something that has been raised up.

I believe we can now forget all about dry seasons.

In respect of "tilan/tilang". The tilan fish has a habit of hiding itself in river weeds and mud.

Based on this new information I'd put my money on "tilang kamaran" being a humorous reference to a place where the tilang hides. The word tilang also being a humorous reference to the sword.

I do not know Dyaks, but it would surprise me greatly if they did not have a sense of humour at least as well developed, probably more so, than any other people.

Njet the word for the whole sword is Tilang kamaran or Tilang Kamarau ( in case the curator mistyped)
I wonder if people who lived so close to nature should name a sword for warfare after a fish that hides himself in the mud it does;t sound so heroic .....

"Ilang" in stead of Tilang and " Kemari(n) " in stead of ' Kemarau or Kemaran" makes " Sword of yesterday " in other words "Sword of the past"
In case it is really "kemarau"( the dry version) than I could imagine that the owner means that nothing ever happend with the sword " the sword is still dry" there's no blood on it" But I confess that's also a little fantasy , but actually is doesn't matter so much.

Its actually more important that the type as seen on the picture has a name as that we figure out what that name it really means. Just name it TK and you're save

kind regards,

Arjan


:)

Arjan:

What I am reading in your earlier post with the picture is the same interpretation as Alan has offered--the name is being applied to a sheath. The picture and description in your graphic refer to a sheath only--there is no mention of a sword in that catalog note. Alan has offered you an intriguing interpretation of what we can see in your picture, and he has pointed to the whimsical or humorous naming of it that would be in keeping with the local personality.

Do you have additional information that this term refers to a particular sword. The sword that you have added in the same posting does not seem to match the catalog description of tilang kamaran.

Ian.

If there is a Dutch component to kamar, I think we can trace the Dutch word back to Latin. The Latin word for a private room or chamber is camera. This is still heard today in English when legal matters are said to be conducted in camera, or in a private room free from public scrutiny.

Ian.

Yep, we can blame that hated Latin for much.

In Classical Malay, "kamera" is a ship's cabin; in Italian a "camera" is a hotel room; Javanese also uses "kamar" for room; then we have the English camera, which is essentially a small room --- ie, small enclosed space --- and of course Ian's "in camera". Actually, the Oxford on Historical Principles devotes around 3 inches of column space to the word "camera" and its derivatives, and I need a magnifying glass to read the print.

No wonder I hated Latin so much 60 odd years ago.

As for the "kemarin" suggestion, well, yes, it does have the same vowels and consonants, but spoken, it has a sound nothing at all like "kamaran".

Personally, I feel that we may have gone as far as it is possible to go in this matter, what is really needed now is somebody who can speak the language, who can live within the society, and who understands the culture. This person could then dedicate a large part of his life to getting at the real guts of the matter. In other words:- dedicated field research, in my experience, its the only thing that really works.

Arjan:

Well, I get to partly answer my own question.

I have come across a footnote (see attached) in the following reference:

Shelford R. An Illustrated Catalogue of the Ethnographic Collection of the Sarawak Museum: Part I Musical Instruments. Journal of the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. 40, p.2. June, 1904.

The footnote implies that the tilang kamarau was indeed a sword of relatively recent origin (circa 1900) and was quite common at that time. Furthermore, the note suggests that this sword may have been a sabre similar to a parang niabor.

Ian

deleted

Hi Ian, here the sword what is related to the scabbard.

Arjan

So "kamaran" seems to be correct.

This creates a brickwall.

In this context of a sword name, rather than a scabbard name, the words simply do not make sense. It is either specific dialect use, or a long standing error.

The answer:- field research.

Arjan:

I think we have exhausted your topic. Thanks for bringing to light this sword and its unusual name. Without further data, it seems we have indeed hit a "brick wall," as Alan has noted. It appears that the only reliable original observations we can find on the web are based on Robert Shelford's writings.

I have bookmarked this thread and hope we can come back to the subject when more data are available.

Regards,

Ian.

In my post #33 I spat the dummy.

I'd had enough. The whole tilang thing stands on shaky foundations and we could hypothesise, or worse still use a little bit of knowledge combined with some Wiki entries and create something entirely fictitious --- it has been done before.

But this thing has caught hold of my interest, and I have become annoyed by the fact that I cannot understand something that I should be able to understand.

So I think we can maybe continue to take a little bit of a poke at this question.

It seems this thing was collected by Robert Shelford. Shelford was a naturalist, not an ethnographer, not an anthropologist, and possibly his expertise in Malay was limited to pretty basic market Malay. It takes a lot of time to gain competence in a foreign language --- even the famed Raffles could only handle basic Malay, one of the reasons he never quite established satisfactory contact with the elites in Jawa.

Or maybe Shelford worked entirely through an interpreter. We don't know, but what we do know is that this name as it stands does not seem to fit into a Malay language pattern. But it should.

Malay is different to English in that it places the most important thing first in sentence, statement, or name, and the descriptor follows:- mobil kuning = yellow car.

Sometimes the principal name and the descriptor can be interchangeable:- jati gembol or gembol jati = both combinations mean the same thing:- burl teak.

So, logically our tilang kamaran should be a tilan fish + a descriptor.

Really, none of the suggestions that I, or anybody else have made really fits a standard Malay pattern. Yes, in names a bit of twisting can go on, and everything suggested might fit one way or another, but they're not perfect.

What we need is a word that will describe a fish, when that fish name is also the name of a sword.

Here are two more suggestions:-

kemerahan = from merah :- red

kemarahan = from marah :- anger

both these words, particularly "kemarahan" if spoken by a native speaker would sound like "kamaran" to somebody with very limited Malay. Don't forget that local pronunciations can play havoc with both vowel and consonant placement.

Maybe there are more words that will fit. However, I do most sincerely doubt that the original name recorded is an accurate representation of the name given to Shelford by his informant.

Are we also considering the fact that the sea dayak speak Iban ?

So the Iban word might have been translated into Malay.

Someone with Iban knowledge would probably have a different view on this name.

Appologies in case I am creating more confusion. ;) :)

No, not more confusion, but a timely reminder.

All these groups in Borneo speak dialects of Malay. All of us who have commented have been commenting in terms of Malay, not commenting in terms of the dialect used in the relevant area.

When the question was initially raised dialect was mentioned, and maybe this is where the difficulty is.

Hi
I like to open this post again. I bought a the following piece as a jimpul but I was told by a well known collector that this is an tilang kamerau. First google search gives this post. Maybe interesting. Unlikely with some damages. Bad weather in germany, to bad to make some daylight-pictures

Best Thomas

Hello Thomas!

A really good piece - congrats!

IMHO this sword can well be considered as jimpul (or as an intermediate/link): This hilt style is typical for jimpul and also the blade ticks quite a lot of boxes even if the tip isn't as steep as in most jimpul blades.

I hope more of the Borneo specialists will comment!

Regards,
Kai