Context ()
Collected by: Samson.Dr.O
Event Date 3/5/1995
Author: Remke Velden

Description ()
Arrow with feathered, bamboo shaft with three barbed, three-dimensional points. Used for hunting flying fox.
Event Date 3/5/1995
Author: Remke Velden

Conservation (Remedial)
CON.2016.3665 | Remedial
Event Date 11/1/2017
Author: MAA Admin

Description (Display)
'Another India: Explorations and Expressions of Indigenous South Asia' 07/03/2017 - 22/04/2018 MAA exhibition label text reads:

The ‘Santhal Trophy’

In February 1856 the Illustrated London News carried an account of the suppression of the Santal rebellion in Chota Nagpur, which Santals today commemorate as the Hul. One of the illustrations provided by the author, Captain Walter Sherwill, was this extraordinary assemblage entitled simply Santhal Trophy.

The Trophy presented hunting tools such as bows, arrows and axes as well as drums as war loot - weapons that were evidence of Santal resistance and savagery. Most of these ‘weapons’ would have had peaceful use outside of the Hul, when sticks and hoes were also taken up in the struggle against landlords and the government.

This reconstruction of Sherwill’s Trophy from the collections at MAA questions the perception of these ‘weapons’, then and now. These objects have been transformed under different gazes at different times. They tell stories of historical struggle, and become symbols of Santal identity and Adivasi resistance today.

3. Three Arrows

The heads of these arrows are designed specifically for use against birds and flying foxes. Otto Samson was commissioned by MAA’s curator in 1937 to make a collection of objects illustrating the ethnography of the Princely State of Mayurbhanj, north of Orissa, including the weapons of the ‘jungle-goers’. He identified these as being used by the ‘Kols’, a generic (and contested) term for several groups including the Mundas, Oraons, Hos and Santals.

Mayurbhanj, Odisha (Orissa) Collected by Otto Samson, 1937 Purchased by Louis C.G. Clarke 1937.1231 A-C


Event Date 22/3/2017
Author: Remke Velden

Exhibition (Li Ka Shing Gallery)
EXH.2017.2 | Another India: Explorations and Expressions of Indigenous South Asia
Event Date 7/3/2017
Author: Remke Velden