The Antiquities of Orissa v2.c18.60.3

v2.c18.60.3

A scabbard for a short Roman sword hangs down on the left, a quiver filled with feathered arrows on the right, while a groom adorned with necklaces and breast jewels runs at the horse's head, holding the bridle. The fierce war-stallion has stamped down two of the enemy; not kicking or prancing, but fairly trampling them into the earth. These appear to be Rākṣasas [156] or aborigines, from their woolly hair, tiger-like mouths and tusks, and their short curved swords like the national Gurkha weapon, (*kukuri*), half billhook, half falchion and equally suited for ripping up a foe, or for cutting a path through the jungle. They wear heavy armlets, but no defensive armour, excepting a round shield made of several plies of metal richly carved, with a boss in the centre and tassels or tufts of hair hanging down from it. The shields appear to have borne some heraldic device and the most perfect of them still exhibits two lizards climbing up on either side of the boss, done to the life. Such quasi-armorial bearings frequently appear in Orissa. Stirling noticed one at Bhuvaneśvara in 1820 and the chiefs of the adjoining Tributary States have each a heraldic device or emblem of signature, handed down in their families from remote generations²³.