5i* A Lisu Jew's Harp from Yunnan* 



By J. Coggest Brown. 



Bamboo Jew's harps are known to have a wide range 

 among various tribes of Eastern Asia. According to H. Balfour 

 they are found as far north as the Ainu of Yezo, and eastwards 

 through the Malayan Archipelago to the Pacific, where they 

 occur in many of the island groups. The same writer refers to 

 their use in Northern India, and has also described a series of 

 six Jew's harps collected in the Siamese Malay States and 

 Perak by Dr. Annandale and Mr. Herbert C. Robinson. 1 



The Rev. A. Willifer Young has traced the distribution of 

 the Jew's harp in various parts of the world and has described 

 six different specimens of this primitive musical instrument 

 made in bamboo by the Lakher and Chin, Naga, Mikir, Garo, 

 Kachin and Assamese tribes of Assam and Burma. Mr. Young 

 was not able to prove the existence of the instrument in Lower 

 Bengal, Behar and Chota Nagpur, and was informed on good 

 authority that it is not used in Burma to the south of Mandalay. 



Reference is also made in the same paper to the use of a 

 form of Jew's harp in Tibet and Nepal; amongst the Lepchas, 

 on the authority of Sir Joseph Hooker; in Mongolia, China and 

 Tibet on the authority of W. W. Rockhill; and in Tibet, Burma, 

 Siam and Japan as well as in the islands of the seas from 

 Borneo to Fiji, Samoa and the Philippines, on the authority of 

 the late Dr. Carrington Bolton.* 



I have recently found that a bamboo Jew's harp of peculiar 

 construction is a favourite musical instrument of the Lisu tribes 

 of Yunnan and the Burma-China frontier. It may be men- 

 tioned here that the Lisu tribes are found in the basin of the 

 Upper Salween between Lat. 25° SO' and Lat. 27° 30', where 

 they exist in a savage state. They spread in numbers as far east 

 as the right bank of the Mekong, and are found in small com- 

 munities far beyond this line. Westwards, they reach into the 

 valley of the Nmai-Hka, the eastern branch of the Irrawaddy. 

 The more peaceful clans who have come into contact with 

 Chinese civilization are found along the northern parts of the 

 Burma-China frontier. There are also numbers of isolated 

 village communities of the same people in the Northern Shan 

 States, in the Kachin Hills east of the Irrawaddy, and in other 

 places. 3 



1 '• Report on a Collection of Musical Instruments from the Siamese 

 Malay States and Perak " by Henry Balfour, MA., F.Z.S. " Fasciculi 

 Malay enses. ' ' Anthropologv, Part II (a), pp. 6-7. 



* "The Jew's Harp in Assam," by A. Willifer Young. Journal 

 Asiatic Soc. Bengal, vol. iv, No. 4, pp. 233-237. 



3 For a detailed account of the Lisu tribes see " Lisu Tribes of the 



