Silver Parang Latok Sword

A very fine example of a parang latok sword from Northern Borneo.

The sword has a very heavy, forward widening blade with a rounded tip area, which falls off to the cutting edge. The part of the blade close to the handle is often rectangular in cross-section though this example is of exceptional quality steel workmanship with a lotus shaped carved steel ferrule and which is then abruptly angled backwards.

The handle with the enlarged, carved dark wood floral pommel is further mounted in silver. ThThe pommel with the decorative pits can be traced back to an abstracted form of makkara, which originally came from Ceylon and South India.

The parang latok is a sword form found only in north-western Borneo. It served as a weapon as well as an agricultural tool. It was also used in Brunei for executions by decapitation. The parang latok is also vouched for at the court of Brunei as a ceremonial object for judicial occasions at the court of the Sultan. There are known pompous and representative variants, which can be over 1 m long and weigh up to over 2 kg. They represent the power of the Sultan and local authorities over life and death, similar to the court swords in Europe.

For hard blows, the blade could be grasped with both hands, with the front hand grasping the thick blade base (“false sharpness”). In this way it is also possible to work close to the ground while squatting (e.g. for splitting wood), as the raised handle keeps the hand away from the ground. The form can probably be seen as a hybrid between the parang pandat of the Bidayuh-Dayak and Turko-Malayan swords (parang pedang).