[443] There is another Dáo in the Eastern regions, a large, square, double-edged blade, with a handle attached to the centre. The Dah of Burma is originally the same weapon as the Nágá Dáo.
[444] In the Bulletin de l’Institut Egyptien (deuxième série, No. 1, année 1880) there is an admirable paper on Eastern heraldry, ‘Le blason chez les Princes musulmans,’ by E. T. Rogers Bey. He proves that a heraldic scutcheon is known to the Arabs as rank, plur. runúk, and that the word is the Persian rang, colour, from which he would derive our (man of) ‘rank,’ a word hitherto unsatisfactorily explained. As regards the tints, ‘azure’ is evidently the Persian lájawardi; and ‘gules’ is better derived from gul, a rose, than from Fr. gueules (jaw), which is L. Lat. gula, reddened skin. These three words suggest that for the origin of heraldry in its present form we must go back to Persia. Of the Sword in European heraldry I shall have more to say in Part II.
[445] Strange to say, these Sword-names are carefully omitted from Liddell and Scott, 1869.
[446] The information was kindly forwarded to me by Captain F. M. Hunter, Assistant Political Resident, Aden. Along the blade runs the inscription, which will be quoted in Part II., and the characters appear modern. My informant thinks that this Chelidonian does not represent the original Zú’l-Fikár, which was two-edged.
[447] This trophy hangs against the staircase wall of the fine armoury belonging to the Museo del Arsenale (Naval Arsenal), Venice. Here, however, it has become a complicated affair with Koranic inscription (ch. xl. vol. i.); open-jawed dragons’ heads at the hilt, and below the handle a rosette with various complications of ‘Yá’ (Allah!).
[448] It is figured in the illustrations following the Antiquities of Orissa, by Rajendra Lala Mitra.
[449] Capt. Cameron and I exhibited a specimen, made for us by good King Blay of Attábo, at a special meeting of the Anthropological Institute of London.
[450] The Austrian geographer, Dr. Josef Chavanne, estimates the mean altitude of Africa at 2,170 feet (round numbers), or more than double that of Europe (971 feet, M. G. Leipoldt).
[451] He makes his Ethiopians emigrate from India to Egypt—but where? when? how? The ‘Asiatic Æthiopians’ of Herodotus lie between the Germanii (Persian Kerman) and the Indus (iii. 93, &c.). The bas-reliefs of Susiana show negroid types, and Texier found the Lamlam tribe in the marshes round the head of the Persian Gulf to resemble the Bisharin of Upper Egypt. Was the Buddha one of these Cushite Ethiopians?
[452] Monumental History, &c.