There is also in my collection a third kind of parang, which at first sight looks almost exactly like the old Roman sword. It is thick, massive, weighty, and at first sight looks more like an ancient than a modern weapon. On a closer examination, however, the peculiar Dyak workmanship is evident. Though it is not like the preceding weapon, convex on one side, and concave on the other, the two sides are entirely distinct. The blade is double-edged, very thick in the middle, and sloped off rather abruptly to the edge on either side.
The handle is only made of wood, but is profusely decorated with human hair of different colors and considerable length, and it is bound with a broad belt of plaited rattan. The sheath for the knife is entirely made of bark, and the knife itself is shown at [fig. 2]. Like the scabbard of the parang-ihlang already described, that of this weapon is richly carved, and adorned with fur and long tufts of human hair.
The belt by which it is suspended is made of rattan split very fine, and plaited so as to form a strap nearly an inch in width, and the sixth of an inch in thickness. It is rounded at the edges, and at the upper part it is ingeniously separated into two portions, so as to form a loop.
The chief peculiarity of this weapon lies in the number of charms which are attached to it. First come two teeth, and then there is a beautifully plaited little case, something like the cocoon of an insect, containing several little pieces of wood. Next comes a small bag of netted string, about an inch and a half in length, in which is a stone, and then come three little flattish baskets, with covers, which are empty. Fastened to the belt by several thongs is a curiously shaped piece of wood which I believe to be used for sharpening the edges of the sword, and to the end of the sheath is hung by a string of beads a feather, the quill of which has been carefully wrapped with red and black string.
This weapon is in all ways a most formidable one, and to European travellers is by far the best for practical purposes. The handle is rather larger than is the case with either of the preceding weapons; the blade has not that curvature which renders it so perilous a weapon in unpractised hands; it is double-edged, and either edge can be used with equal facility; and lastly, it possesses a point, which is not the case with the other forms of the sword.
One Dyak chief had an ornament attached to his sword of which he was exceedingly proud. It was an enormous tuft of hair, being nothing more nor less than the pigtails of ten Chinese whom he had killed, and whose hair he had fastened to the scabbard of his sword. This ornament must have been singularly inconvenient to him. There is in my collection an average specimen of a Chinese pigtail. It weighs nine ounces, so that the weight of the ten must rather exceed five pounds and a half, while the length is five feet, so that ten tufts of hair, each five feet in length, must have given the wearer an infinity of trouble as he walked.
The reader will already have noticed how the various forms of sword are used alike by the Malays and the Dyak tribes. There is another weapon, which, though strictly a Malay invention, is used by the Dyaks, and indeed, with some variations, throughout the whole of the Malay Archipelago. It is called the kris, sometimes, but wrongly, spelt creese, and is so common that any ordinary collection of weapons is sure to contain several specimens of the kris. It is remarkable for three points. In the first place, the handle is not set in a line with the blade, as in ordinary daggers, but is bent at a right angle; next, the blade is almost always waved in form, like the flaming sword with which the old painters armed the angels who kept the gates of Paradise; and thirdly, the blade is never smooth, but dull, rough, and indented with curved grooves much resembling in form the marks on a “browned” gun-barrel. By referring to the [illustration “Kris”] on page 1129, the reader will better understand its peculiarities.
There are few weapons which vary more in value, or in which the price set upon them is so apparently excessive. A first-rate blade, even without the handle and sheath, will cost from eighteen to twenty pounds, and an ordinary one can scarcely be purchased under two pounds. They have by no means the appearance of being valuable weapons, the steel of the blade being not only rough and corroded, but looking as if it were composed of successive laminæ which are on the point of being separated. This effect is produced by steeping the blade in lime juice, thus causing a partial corrosion of the metal, which is made of small pieces of steel twisted and welded together in such a manner as to produce exceeding toughness.
One of these weapons in my collection is worn away almost to a mere ribbon of steel by the action of the acid, and, strange as it may seem, weapons of this kind, which look much as if they were mere pieces of rusty iron-hooping, are the most valued by connoisseurs. The length of grain in this weapon is wonderful, the corrosion of the lime juice showing it in the most perfect manner. The long grooves can be traced from one end of the blade to the other, following the waved form of the narrower portion, and curling round in the wider part near the hilt, as if the whole of the blade had been forged out of steel wires laid parallel to each other and then welded together.
The lime juice takes off from the edge that razor-like smoothness which is so much admired in European blades, and gives it a ragged, saw-like appearance that is peculiar to the instrument. This edge, however, is a terrible one for penetration into human flesh, and answers the purpose even better than a plain and sharp edge could do.