Pangka or Top Spinning

Top spinning is a Malaysian hobby . The most famous state having this hobby is Kelantan where there is an annual festival, Festival Gasing.

In Sarawak a top is not "Gasing" but "Pangka" , played by the Iban children several decades ago. Once kids go to school in the 1960's they no longer spend time developing their game according to a local historian.

Photo from BBC :Victorian children spinning tops.

That is why many longhouse children of Iban descent no longer know how to make pangka or even play with them. There is only a very old photo in some books which can prove that Iban children did play with pangka. Today Sarawak Museum probably doesn't even have a spinning top to show. Sarawak has lost many such precious artifacts.

The best pangka were made from belian wood because they could not be "demolished" or cracked by an aggressive top.

The competition would be won by a top which could "crack" another top. It was not a competition to find out which top could spin the longest.

Adults who were very skilled in making pangka would be surrounded by admiring children in the longhouse. Some pangka were even square ones.

Those were the days.





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