180 A NATURALIST'S V/ANDERINGS 



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excellence that in any of the others, especially in its Balai, 

 where I was greatly interested in finding what I may call a 

 veritable coat of arms, carved ont of an immense block of wood 

 and erected in the central position, where one would expect 

 an object with the significance of a coat of arms to be placed. 

 From ^vhat I could learn it had such a sif^-nificance in the 



estimation of the chief of the village ; for he told me that 

 only such villages as could claim origin from some distant 

 villaofe could erect such a carving in their Balai. I am not, 

 however, master enough of the terms of blazonry current m 

 the College of Arms to describe it in fitting language. The 

 shield had double supporters ; on each side a tiger rampant 



COAT OF ARMS IN THE TILLAGi: OF TADJAR-BCLAN 



bearing on its back a snake defiant, upheld the shield, in whose 

 centre the most prominent quartering was a floral ornament, 

 which might be a sunflower shading two deer, one on each side — 

 the dexter greater than the sinister. Above the floral ornament 

 was a central and to me unintelligible halfnioon-like blazon- 

 ing, but on either side of it was an *• ulai lidai " (Chorus of 

 bystanders : " Undoubtedly an ulai lidai '*), but of what it was 

 the similitude among created things, beyond suggesting faintly 

 the lineaments of a scorpion, I was not pursuivant enough to 

 recognise ; on the sinister of the two, however, was a man 

 *' tandacking " (dancing). Below the tips of the conjoined tails 

 of the supporting tigers were two ornate triangles, the upper 



