A fine trapezoidal gouge and associated items from North Borneo
This short note by Tom Harrisson, published in JMBRAS Vol. 39 (1966), records three further observations on the palang—a penile piercing device used among Bornean peoples—following his earlier 1964 paper on the subject.
Summary
The note addresses three items: (i) the British Museum’s Kayan palang specimens, for which Harrisson obtains new information via a letter from Dr. Rodney Needham quoting a 1954 communication from Cranstone, revealing that H. Ling Roth deposited four specimens with a brief description in 1895 (pp. 172–173); (ii) an old Kayan tool called katiputin in the Sarawak Museum collection (catalogue no. 200), collected by Brooke-Low before 1890 in the Belaga-Baloi area, consisting of two hardwood sticks and a sharpened iron rod used to perforate the glans penis horizontally (p. 173); and (iii) a calcinated encrusted mass removed from an Iban male’s penis in 1964, described by Dr. Norvin D. Schuman as a “penolith”—a urethral stone deposited on the palang bar, weighing 26 grams, possibly linked to vitamin A deficiency in the local diet (pp. 173–174).