ACD - Austronesian Comparative Dictionary Online

*ikay mallet for beating bark into bark cloth

PMP ikay mallet for beating bark into bark cloth ⇫ ¶

WMP
Bare'e	ike	a mallet of rough black stone, with a rattan handle that is used to pound tree bark into bark cloth

POC ike mallet for beating bark into bark cloth ⇫ ¶

OC
Hawaiian	iʔe	tapa beater
Anuta	ike	wooden hammer or mallet for pounding bark cloth or pandanus leaf
Samoan	iʔe	beater (used for beating bark cloth)
Futunan	ike	quadrangular mallet of wood or iron, used for pounding out bark cloth
Fijian	ike	mallet for beating bark into cloth
Niue	ike	a wooden mallet for beating bark cloth
Tongan	ike	mallet with which the inner bark of the paper mulberry tree is beaten in making cloth
Rarotongan	ike	a wooden mallet, made from hard wood, used in ancient days for the purpose of beating out native bark cloth; to strike with the in beating out bark cloth
Maori	ike	to strike with a hammer or other heavy instrument

Reconstructions

PMP	ikay	mallet for beating bark into…
POC	ike	mallet for beating bark into…

Note

This comparison was first pointed out to me some years ago by Michael Martens of SIL, Indonesia. For reasons that I can no longer trace it was not entered into the ACD until now, when a chance discovery of a printed email message that related to it brought it to my attention again. Martens’ documentation of this term for central Sulawesi was far richer than I am able to reproduce here. Although linguistic evidence for the use of bark cloth in PAn is not currently available, the bark of the paper mulberry tree (Broussonetia papyrifera) was pounded with a wooden or stone mallet into bark cloth by the Amis of eastern Taiwan until at least the first half of the twentieth century (Chen 1988:143-145). In its present form this comparison is instructive in showing how a culturally important linguistic term can be lost almost everywhere, but retained in just two widely-separated parts of a very farflung language family, namely central Sulawesi and Polynesia-Fiji.