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Originally Posted by A. G. Maisey
If, as moderator, you have the ability to begin a thread and move these possibly irrelevant posts to it, why not do so? Then Gustav and I and anybody else who felt like it could ramble on about symbols and icons and etc, etc, etc to our hearts content and upset nobody.
But you know the way it is:- you start off talking about the weather to somebody, and before you know where you are you're discussing Einstein's Theory of Relativity, and from there the discussion jumps to the problems involved in restoring steam locomotives --- and availability of good coking coal, and what 7X5 box trailer full of beach sand weighs --- this sort of diversion never stops. That's what happens with non-formal discussions:- they wander all over the place --- and this Forum is a venue for informal discussion, so discussions are bound to get off the tracks from time to time.
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Alan, a sarcastic response is really not necessary. I was neither chiding you gentlemen for the direction the thread was taking nor trying to curtail your rights as members to wander off to discuss other aspects of hilts or even Einstein's Theory of Relativity if it suits you. After a bit of back and forth on the two questions i mentioned above Gustav posted the
Old Javanese Gold cover pictures as an "afterthought" and made no other comment. You then followed with some Nyamba hilts with the comment that they may be "possibly relevant". I then asked if you gentlemen could expand on these ideas, i.e. what is your "afterthought" and how are these "relevant". That is all. Not trying to stifle whatever direction you are taking. You see, i generally say pretty much exactly what i mean. I would ask that you not read any other motivations into my posts. I am mostly just following along with this discussion, not taking sides or trying to promote or disprove any of the presented theories. I am asking questions, perhaps the wrong ones that don't open the door to higher knowledge, but questions no less. In other words, i have no dog in this race.
Gustav, on the description provided in the book itself, i presented it to you for no other reason than that you stated in the linked thread that you did not yet own this book. So i presented the passage so that you would know what had been written there on this hilt. It appears on page 249 beneath 3 rather small photographs of various angles of this hilt. They may have given you a wide date range (1000-1400) on the website, but i can find no place where any dating is applied to this hilt in the book. Alan may be correct. Perhaps i don't understand what i am seeing. The photos are also pretty small in the book, much, much smaller than the close-up images used on the books cover. There is some scroll work in the area where one would expect to find the male organ, but i would have to use a great deal of imagination to see it as such (even when i magnified the region). Still, i concede that might be its symbolic intention. Very hard to tell without larger images.