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Originally Posted by migueldiaz
hello all!
i've just finished reading sellato's hornbill and dragon (courtesy of a friend). there's a lot of pics of the mandau in there but the book didn't say what the pommel figure represents.
i've just browsed the articles in this forum but i didn't come across any info as to what the pommel is supposed to depict.
was there a consensus already among experts on the mandau as to what it is, and if yes, what would it be? (e.g., would it be the dragon dog, aso, for instance).
thanks in advance for any answer 
the pic below is from oriental-arms of course ... |
Hi,
not an easy question to aswer, course in my opinion there's nothing such as " The mandauhilt" . the variations are enourmous due to cultural influences, migrations, wars, etc. actually the mandauhilt is built up from a complex mix of mostly leech motifs, dog/dragon motifs and human/spirit faces.
The overall shape is ( at least in my opinon) not fitting into an dragon,dog or animal head. If we may believe the old work of Hein , the mandauhilt is built up from 3 faces above eachother and indeed that is in many cases recongnizable,but mostly on mandaus from the south east part of Borneo.
Iban ( and a whole lot of other related tribes) carve a whole other mix of scrolls, dragons, nippels etc etc and their variations seems quite endless.
For explanation of these motifs you have to think a little the Dayak way.
The surrounding world is filled by spirits and to frigthen the bad ones and cheer the good onesyou can use several motifs. These motifs are on their way related mostly to symbols of power and strength like, deerhorn,hair,blood
In many cases the hilt has a spirit/human face what is so positioned that it sees forward when the mandau is in the scabbard.You see all over Borneo such faces sometimes very stylistic and totally faded.
According to Heppel ( read also
Iban art) these faces represent the spirit of a trophy head.
there are however also totally ( quite scarce) undecorated mandauhilts, "Islamic" mandauhilts with flowermotifs, double headed mandauhilts , etc. etc etc.
I will see if I can find time to picture some hilts in my collection,
best regards,
Arjan