Tumbok lada
knife / dagger
A tumbok lada or tumbuk lada is a traditional slightly curved dagger that originates in the eastern coast of Sumatra, Indonesia and the western coast of Malay Peninsula, Malaysia.
The name comes from tumbok meaning to grind or crush, and lada meaning pepper. Thus name is derived from the handle of the Tumbok Lada, which is shaped like a traditional mortar and pestle and is used to grind peppercorns. It is thought that the Tumbok Lada may have first being introduced in a bronze prototype.
Description
Tumbok lada has a slightly curved, single-edged blade. The blade narrows slightly from the hilt to the tip. The cutting edge is on the concave side of the blade. The blades are often made from pattern welded steel and usually have one or more hollow grinds that run just below the spine of the blade. The blades are made almost exactly like the sewar blades, but they are wider and thicker. The place is pointed or rounded.
“Tumbok lada” enters the record as knife / dagger. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Tumbok, lada and knife can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Tumbok lada” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.