Indonesian bronze drum-head from Pahang
R. O. Winstedt’s brief note corrects the identification of a bronze object from the Tembeling, Pahang, previously published as a burial-urn lid by Mr. Linehan (Vol. VI, Part IV, November 1928), establishing it as the head of a bronze drum (p. 456).
Summary
Winstedt identifies the Pahang specimen as a bronze drum-head, drawing on comparative examples in the Batavian Museum (noted by Dr. P. H. van Stein Callenfels), finds from Annam and Java, and modern drums in Bangkok Buddhist wats. He cites M. Goloubew’s paper at the Fourth Pacific Science Congress, Bandong, and the entry Keteltrommen in the Encyclopaedie van Nederlandsch Oost-Indie (Vol. II) as supporting evidence. He notes that, so far as he knows, no other specimen had been unearthed in Malaya (p. 456).
A postscript records that I. H. N. Evans had independently identified the fragment as part of a drum face of the same type in the Journal of the Federated Malay States Museum (XII, 1929, p. 187).