Subject: cavalryman
Culture: Tibetan
Setting: Tibetan wars 1788-1904
Object: armor
Metropolitan Museum of Art > Stone Gallery of Arms and Armor *
"Armored Cavalryman Tibetan, and possibly Bhutanese and Nepalese, 18th-19th century Iron, gold, copper alloy, wood, leather, and textile...
This figure has been assembled based on photographs taken in the 1930s and 1940s in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa during the Great Prayer Festival, which included troops of ceremonial armored cavalry who wore a standardized set of equipment as stipulated by the central government of Tibet probably from the mid-seventeenth or eighteenth century onward. The rider was outfitted with a helmet, a set of iron disks known as the 'four mirrors' worn over a shirt of mail, an armored belt, a bow case and quiver, a matchlock musket, a bandoleer with gunpowder and bullets, and a short spear ... Armed and equipped in a similar fashion, Tibetan government officials were required to demonstrate proficiency on horseback with musket, bow and arrow, and spear in contests that were still being held periodically as late as the mid-twentieth century."
* Harwood International Center > Samurai Collection
"Llamelar [SIC] helmet
Tibet
18th century
Iron, bronze" ...
