Pfew....
I am glad that Arjan already replied.
That was exactely what I wanted to write
But seriously. The global shape of mandau hilts, in my opnion, is largely dictated by the shape of the antler from which it is cut/carved.
There are various shapes, but in most cases they are following the natural shape of the antler of the sambar deer.
Probably the various tribes will have their own names for different mandau hilt shapes. But in this respect I would like to recommend "the Womans Warpath" by Traude Gavin.
This is a book about textiles / Pua and Miss Gavin points out the fact that in our western minds we often want designs to be depicting something.
So if a design is called "centipede" or "leech" design, we start searching this design for features that resemble a cetipede or leech.
While in certain cases realting to Pua/textiles, the name of the design is just a name, because the woman wanted to give a certain design a recognisable name in order to be able to discuss it or to recall or reproduce it.
Take for instance a "stanley knife" in our culture.
The knife does not look like a person called stanley.
But with this name we all know what type/shape and function we are talking about.
In mandau hilts, we often see that the protruding ends of the hilt ar hollow and decorated with fangs. IMHO most probably to depict an ASO/Dragon.
But to take such a hilt and than decide that it depicts a dragon will probably be to easy.
Anyway, a veryinteresting thread. Thank you Miguel for starting it.
I would like to join Maurice in his hope that somemore forumites wil join the discussion and contribute with odd or scarce examples of hilts.
BTW, of course we already have a very large number of pictures on this fourm with quite scarce and rare mandau hilts.
Lets do our best to add some more
Best regards,
Willem