Helmut Loofs-Wissowa

Dongson Drums:

Instruments of Shamanism or Regalia?

A New Interpretation of their Decoration may Provide the Answer

The drums

A short explanation of what is meant by "Dongson Drums" may be appropriate. Dongson is the name of an ancient dwelling as well as burial site in Thanh-hôa Province, in the southern side of the Red River delta in northern Vietnam. Excavations carried out here in the 1920's and 30's, together with the many surface finds previously made in the area, gave a fairly clear picture of what was considered to be the earliest bronze-using civilization in Southeast Asia, which became known as the "Dongson Culture". ! Amongst the hundreds of bronze objects found at the site, including axes, spearheads, vessels, ornaments, etc., there were also bronze drums or small replicas of them. It was thus for the first time that such drums had been excavated, rather than to have been found only as chance finds. For drums identical or similar to those excavated at Dongson have been known from all over the Indochinese Peninsula as well as Indonesia for a very long time. News of such strange objects reached Europe in particular during the 19th century to arouse the curiosity of scholars to such an extent that at the turn of the century, when the existence of 165 of these drums was known, a number of books appeared to analyse them. The most seminal of these was that by Heger 2 which classified these drums into four groups (known ever since by the denomination of "Heger I-IV"). Obviously, the Heger-I type is the earliest and we are dealing here only with this particular type (figs. 1 and 2). These drums, then, have been called "one of the most difficult and most important problems of Southeast Asian cultural history" .3

However, these drums did not appear in a vacuum. So as to exploit the potential of their interpretation to the fullest, we first have to establish their original cultural and chronological context; this is far from easy.

For the last twenty years or so, Southeast Asian archaeology, and in particular its Bronze Age, has been in a state of turmoil. New theories proposed indeed that bronze was worked here — more precisely in Northeast Thailand — as early the third millennium B.C., thus a thousand years earlier than in China. This was followed by the claim that it was even in the fifth or sixth millennium B.C., which was eventually reduced to a mere early fourth millennium B.C. The media eagerly propagated these sensational dates, as well as their true meaning, namely that therefore the earliest bronze in the world came from Thailand. For millions of people — including a great number of professional archaeologists — this misconception has simply become part of common knowledge. 4

The implications of this erroneous notion with regard to the study of ancient bronze drums in Southeast Asia are obvious. Soon after the sensational early dates for bronze in northeastern Thailand were made public, a trend developed in neighbouring northern Vietnam, the area in Southeast Asia where the greatest number of the earliest type bronze drums (Heger-I) have been found, to emulate these dates by claiming that a legendary dynasty, starting in the early third millennium B.C., is to be equated with the beginning of bronze in Vietnam. However, there is no clear sign for bronze in Vietnam that is earlier than the turn of the first to the second millennium B.C. But the fact that sophisticated bronze artifacts, such as socketed axes or spear-heads, elaborate bracelets or other items which have often been found in association with the drums, are dated, in this way, to several thousand years earlier in Thailand and up to at least one thousand years earlier in Vietnam, causes some awesome chronological and cultural problems.

If, however, the date for these earliest bronze socketed axes, etc. was brought down to the acceptable level of around 1000 B.C. at the earliest, these problems disappear. The northeastern Thai bronze sites, such as Non Nok Tha, Ban Chiang, Ban Na Di and others, now look increasingly like the local extensions of a bronze-using civilization — and perhaps polity — the centre of which was situated in the northern Vietnam/Yunnan region; on these grounds, such a date would appear quite probable. It would also constitute a terminus ante quern for the earliest bronze drums, the Heger-I "Dongson Drums".

There is also a psychological aspect of the cultural context to be considered. At that time, even much more than at present, Southeast Asian societies lived in a "Vegetal Universe" and produced a "civilization of Vegetal Matter". 5 In such a civilization of perishable material anything permanent must take on a special significance. We know from the times of the "Indi- anized Kingdoms" in the area that there was a clear division in architecture between religious monuments which had to be in stone or bricks, and other constructions, including royal palaces, which were in wood, bamboo or other perishable matter. It seems reasonable to assume that in still earlier times from which no buildings or sculpures in stone are known, the introduction of the first large objects (as opposed to small weapons or implements) in bronze, such as the drums, must have caused fascination. This points a priori to a ritual-religious use of these drums, rather than a purely utilitarian one.

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