practicesInheriting
said the charm outlives its owner
also: handing on · pusaka · heirloom charm · taonga tuku iho
practiceIsland Southeast AsiaAotearoa New ZealandThe PacificThe Himalaya and TibetRome and ItalyAustraliaIndonesiaMalaysiaNew ZealandFijiTongaChinaNepalItalyAustraliaconfidence medium
Among Arrernte groups, ownership of sacred tjurunga was determined by a person's conception site within a patrilineal totemic clan, and access was limited to a small number of people. Australian institutions restrict access to material of this kind to people with the permission of the relevant community. This atlas prints that rule and holds nothing further about those objects or their transmission. — Arrernte practice as described in the cited account, and AIATSIS, whose founding Act and collection policy restrict access to items deposited under conditions of restricted access
The atlas prints the restriction and stops. Why.
A charm that passes from one person to the next and gathers weight as it goes. The object is the same object; what changes is that it now carries a line of people. Traditions that inherit charms tend to have rules about who may receive one, which is what separates an heirloom from a second-hand purchase.
citedWhen
1830 to now still carried cited
| Period | nineteenth century to the present in the dated cases; older in each tradition's own account |
|---|---|
| How the date is known | textual — a dated text describes it |
| Note | Dated from the 1830 surrender of Diponegoro's kris, the earliest dated event in these sources that turns on an inherited charm. Every tradition here describes the practice as much older, and none of the accounts read gives an earlier year. |
Years are stored astronomically — 1 CE is 1, 1 BCE is 0, 500 BCE is −499 — and printed the way a reader says them. How these dates are made.
The thing itself
| Form | Pendant |
|---|---|
| Made of | Iron · Jade · Tooth, tusk and claw · Agate and onyx · Gold |
| Goes | At the waist · At the neck · In the grave |
| Made by | a smith, a carver, or in the Fijian case the sea — tabua were originally available only from beached whales and from trade with Tonga |
| Retired | no — it is kept |
What its carriers say it stops
Reported, attributed, not tested here. Each row below is somebody's claim, with their name on it.
- Bad luck, unspecified citedsaid by Javanese owners, for whom a kris carries piyandel, the property of adding self-confidence to its holder
- Infertility citedsaid by Māori practice as recorded by Robley, in which a hei-tiki was often given to a woman by her husband's family when she had trouble conceiving
- The evil eye — harm carried by a look, often an admiring one citedsaid by the account of dzi beads, whose etched eyes are described as meeting the harm with its own image
The story
Java files the inherited blade under a word of its own. A kris is revered as tosan aji, sacred heirloom weapon, and counted a pusaka. Heirloom blades were handed down through successive generations and worn at weddings and other ceremonies; a fighter might carry three — his own, one from his father-in-law and one that was the family's. A pusaka kris given by a Javanese king to a noble or a subject stood for the king's confidence in the receiver and counted as a great honour. When Prince Diponegoro was defeated and detained at the end of the Java War and had to hand his kris to the Dutch in 1830, the event marked the disarming of the kris among the Javanese populace; its ceremonial life as heirloom and personal amulet continued.
Fiji keeps its whale teeth out of the market on purpose. Tabua are not sold, but traded as gifts at weddings, birthdays and funerals, and were traditionally given for atonement or esteem in sevusevu and in negotiations between rival chiefs. Age shows on them: contact with the oils in human hands darkens the tooth. The law now constrains the handing on — removal from Fiji is capped at 225 exports a year, requires permits from the Ministry of iTaukei Affairs and CITES papers, and in 2007 New Zealand returned 146 tabua seized for lacking valid export permits.
Māori hei-tiki pass through the ground. Hei-tiki are taonga, treasures, usually of pounamu, and Horatio Gordon Robley recorded two main readings of them: memorials to ancestors, or representations of Hineteiwaiwa, goddess of childbirth. Under the first, they were often buried when their kaitiaki — their guardian — died, and retrieved later to be kept somewhere special and brought out at tangihanga. Under the second, a hei-tiki was often given to a woman by her husband's family when she was having trouble conceiving.
Rome is the counter-case. A freeborn Roman boy wore his bulla until he came of age, and before putting on the toga virilis he placed it in the care of the household gods, the Lares. It went sideways into the house's keeping, not down to a son.
Inference — inheritance and the market pull against each other in every one of these cases, and the pull is visible in prices. Ancient dzi beads reach hundreds of thousands of US dollars, with beads carrying more eyes and the iron-inclusion marks called bloodspots worth more; new dzi run from about ten to two thousand US dollars depending on quality and lustre. An object that can be inherited can be sold, and the rules that make inheriting possible — who may receive, from whom — are exactly the rules a sale breaks.
How it is made and carried
By the tradition's own rule: down a male line, from a father-in-law at a marriage, from a king to a subject, out of the ground after a guardian's death, or as a gift at a funeral. Several traditions attach maintenance to receipt — a kris inherited is a kris that has to be cleaned yearly.
Now
Live, and regulated. Tabua move within Fiji as gifts and across borders only with permits. Kris are worn as part of Javanese ceremonial dress and kept as family pusaka. Dzi beads are traded at high prices alongside machine-made copies sold by the strand for less than two US dollars, which the trade distinguishes by whether the decoration penetrates the bead's core.
What this is near
What names this one
Each in its own words, from its own page.
Where this came from
- Kris — Wikipedia read 2026-09-16
- Tabua — Wikipedia read 2026-09-16
- Hei-tiki — Wikipedia read 2026-09-16
- Dzi bead — Wikipedia read 2026-09-16
- Bulla (amulet) — Wikipedia read 2026-09-16
- Pounamu — Wikipedia read 2026-09-16
- Tjurunga — Wikipedia read 2026-09-16
- Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies — Wikipedia read 2026-09-16
Elsewhere
Record updated 2026-09-16. This record as JSON. Every field carries its own provenance; the tier chips above say which.