Sinhala / Sri Lankan Swords?

[David]

Originally Posted by Ibrahiim al Balooshi

Salaams Gustav... For what its worth I have never seen two descriptions the same... and for that matter no two Kastane the same ...Here are a few from important museums collectors and specialists but there are scores more all placing into the rich descriptive mixture a host of different images. I think the description at your reference is fairly near the artistic licence required to balance the equation. It ought to be as it took me a while to write !

Ibrahiim, are you saying that you wrote the Wikipedia page for the kastane that Gustav linked to above? I hope not because it is the epitome of why Wikipedia is so distained though out most of the academic world. This short entry provides very little real information other than description of what a kastane looks like, something which could be achieved far better simply by making a google image search to look at all the fine visual examples available on the internet. The article also provides absolutely no scholarly references or footnotes, a no-no even for Wikipedia pages, only providing links to mostly commercial sites. BTW, the Antique Roadshow (from the link on this entry) is notoriously bad at assessing ethnographic arms. I had to school them on keris when i went to the Roadshow and i was just in discussion with a guy who said they told him his Javanese keris was and archaic Moro kris. While the guy in the kastane link didn't seem to say anything particularly wrong in his appraisal he added no information regarding the symbolism of the hilt whatsoever.
Pointing to your "important museums collectors and specialists", the first description (Victoria & Albert Museum) is describing the ends of the quillons as "dragon heads", not the pommel. Seems to me these quillon beasts are generally makara or serapendiya in most examples i've seen, but this entry says nothing of the pommel, which seems to be the point of the most heated discussions here.
I'm afraid i have no idea what "St. Peterberg 1850" is supposed to be, but they clearly refer to the pommel as a stylized lion head just as so many others here have already maintained. It is again the quillon ends that are described as dragon heads and again, we here all seem to know better and recognize them as makara or serapendiya.
Chrispties (i can only assume that you meant Christie's) is a renown auction house that sells any sort of antiques and other items of value. As such they are really more "generalists" than "specialists" and i have found that auction houses in general are notoriously misinformed on ethnographic edged weapons so i am not at all surprised that they would misidentify the kastane pommel as a dragon head. Auction houses are most concerned with getting the highest price possible for the items they auction. Accurate descriptions do not always factor into that equation.
Robert Elgood's entry is really the only entry worthy of consideration here as it comes from an established and generally well received and excepted reference book on the subject of ethnographic weapons. Note that Elgood states that the pommel is invariably decorated with the snub-nosed Sinhalese lion, something which i believe at this point most of us seem to understand as true.
I'm not sure where you want to take this thread at this point Ibrahiim, as long-standing members who have tried to stay with this discussion for so long begin to flee, but i think that at this point you are, to coin a phrase,"beating a dead gargoyle".