The “palang” II: Three further notes
This is a three-part short note by Tom Harrisson (1966) documenting additional material on the palang, a penile bar device used in Borneo, following his earlier 1964 article in the same journal.
Summary
The note records three items: (i) a 1954 letter from Cranstone at the British Museum confirming that H. Ling Roth deposited four Kayan utang specimens in 1895, with a brief description of their use (p. 172); (ii) a pre-1890 Kayan tool called katiputin from the Belaga-Baloi area, consisting of two hardwood sticks and a twisted iron rod, used to perforate the glans penis horizontally during the operation (p. 173); and (iii) a calcinated urethral stone (“penolith”) weighing 26 grams, removed from an Iban man in the Balleh area, which had formed around a 21 mm iron palang bar left in situ (p. 173–174). Harrisson notes that such secondary complications are widespread among older men in the palang zone but rarely reported to outside doctors due to cultural reticence.