To quote a dear departed friend where Bali iconography is concerned, "Even the Goodies have teeth"

That's a very nice grouping; excellent workmanship!
What or who is the figure on the right side of the image?
Great additions to the thread! Thanks :)

Rick, this thread may be of some insight.

http://www.vikingsword.com/vb/showthread.php?t=27190

Thank you Rick.

It’s a horse.

A new addition to the collection, a Lombok handle.

Interesting and well done pieces. JustYS and Sajen do you know the approximate age of your examples?

For my edification, Sajen yours is Hanapu? JustYS from left yours are 1. Unknown 2 Vishnu and Guarda 3. Rakshasa 4. Ganesh 5. Unknown I can't see what he is holding for a clue 6. Rangda and a snack. 7. Horse with no visible wings.

Nice contemporary carvings Just. Yes, there are some folks who only collect hilts. I can see why it can be addictive.

Hello IP,

I can only guess the age of my hilt, it's used and show age, made from buffalo horn. 50 to 100 years? It's a monkey but I don't think that it should represent Hanuman.

Regards,
Detlef

Hi IP,

As David said, mines are mostly contemporary (20th/21st century hilts).

From left to right:
1. Wayang character
2. Vishnu riding Garuda
3. Rakshasa/Demon
4. Ganesha
5. The carver said Prabu (King), could be Rama but not sure
6. Rangda
7. Horse

I have just finished reading a very good book, it is a translation from French of the ethnographic accounts of Pierre Dubois, Helen Creese, an Australian academic is the author, the title is "Bali in the Early Nineteenth Century".

Much of the content was familiar to me from other reading that I have done, but all the same there was a lot, a real lot, of things I did not know.

The reason why I have mentioned it here is that I now understand why it is that identification of the characters portrayed in Balinese totogan hilts is somewhere between difficult & impossible in many cases. Often even the carvers are not aware of the character they are carving.

A bit peculiar?

Well, in the book I just mentioned I discovered that way back in the early 19th century in Bali, the Brahmins absolutely controlled the depiction of totogan characters, they would provide a carver with a description, a sketch, or a rough example, sometimes an old example, and the carver would carve it to the Brahmin's instructions. They did not know what they were carving, they only knew what the Brahmin client wanted.

Another factor to consider is this:- even if the name of the totogan character has been correctly given, we still do not know exactly who the hilt is supposed to represent, it is very likely to be the grand father or father of somebody.

So it is perhaps best not to get too caught up in IDing Bali hilt characters, in the past, and through to today, it is a guessing game.

I have just learned that the hilt is a representation of Putri Mandalika a Sasak princess whose figure overlaps and someone is identified with the one of Parvati . The goddess is worshipped by the Sasak population of Lombok but also on Bali.


I got this from a new friend , Duncan, who is a very knowledgeable hilt connoisseur , Very thankful to him.