From Card: "See 219,987 It is similar to the Valiha of wood. A section of bamboo consisting of a portion of two joints with the septum removed. It has 16 strings cut from the outer surface of the bamboo and both ends of each string left attached to the cylinder. Small pieces of gourd shell have been crowded between the strings and the cylinder near each end. The strings are tuned by moving the pieces of gourd to or from each other. This specimen had lost its number, locality and name of collector."
In Dec 2008, this was stored in Indonesia / Java section, and this record had no locality or culture listed. The ledger book has no accession information, but it was entered into the ledger book in November 1889, and the locality listed is "Africa (Cent. or East)". There is no evidence that it is from Indonesia. An unattributed description on the catalog card compares this instrument to catalog number 219987, a valiha ("valina" is a misspelling) from Madagascar. It is very much like 219987 in size, materials, and construction, although 219987 is in better condition. This instrument (E94644) has a small, old-looking tag with the number "158" glued to the side. This may be a collector's number. It has been moved to the Madagascar section of storage and given a tentative locality of "Madagascar?" and culture "Malagasy?" until further documentation can confirm this.
