Post #652362 by White Devil on Mon, Sep 17, 2012 8:05 AM

This item, wryly reports the New Zealand Electronic Text Centre, "represents a peculiar artifact said to have been found at Purakanui, Otago, and which some genius has labelled 'Maori Flute.' It is more in sorrow than in anger that we disclaim this weird looking object. As a seven bowled tobacco pipe it might satisfy the most ardent of smokers."

Friedrich Ratzel writes in his "The History of Mankind: The Races of Oceania,"
"As kava came in from the eastward, so did tobacco and betel from the west. We can indicate New Guinea and its neighbourhood as the central point of both. Both travel in close conjunction, tobacco having spread with extraordinary rapidity; for instance, in a few years it has overrun the Admiralty Islands and New Ireland. Towards the end of the eighties the limit of tobacco passed exactly through Normanby, now it is cultivated on all the larger groups of the Pacific Islands, and in many places it already grows wild. In east and south-east New Guinea it is smoked with a piece of bamboo, through the small opening of which the smoke is drawn from the bowl and swallowed; this intoxicating practice is known as bau-bau. In the Woodlark, Trobriand, and Laughlan groups, the natives profess to have smoked through a reed before the arrival of the Europeans. This was filled with the smoke from the leaves of a certain bush, and then passed round the circle till it was emptied. This reed has been mistakenly regarded as a weapon. The Papuas are great smokers, and A. B. Meyer mentions as a peculiarity of theirs that, after puffing out the smoke through nose or mouth, they form their mouths to a point, and draw in the air with a noise, so that he could always hear when a Papua was smoking in his neighbourhood. Clay pipes have long been manufactured at various spots among the islands, and the Maoris understood how to carve them of stone in the same artistic fashion as is shown in their most original utensils."

A few more Maori pipes...

Batak (Sumatran) tobacco pipes and tobacco container.

Inwa was the ancient imperial capital of the Burmese kingdoms from the 14th to 19th centuries. This 17th century bronze pipe features a head adorned with a gombi, a headdress with features that supposedly reflected the inner character of the wearer.

This is a 16th or 17th century clay pipe from Inwa and depicts a Keinnaya, which is a legendary half-human, half-bird entity.

This Karo Batak pipe, decorated with the face of singa, was extremely heavy and probably rested upon the ground.

Nias bone pipe.

Bringing our Oceanic pipe tour to both a geographic and chronological conclusion, here we have a modern tribal Chokwe (Congo) pipe, 24 1/2" inches long: an impressive rendering upon a depressing theme.