Mace Chhadi or Geida
Bikaner, Rajasthan (India)
18th Century
Length: 620mm
An elegant and rare Indian mace from the seventeenth - eighteenth century. Made entirely of steel and octagonally faceted, it has a gentle curve and is flared at both ends. It bears a marking stippled on the body along with an unidentified single character, showing that it was once in the Bikaner armoury. It is mounted on a custom-made stand.
Sufi ghazis are recorded as having used such maces in the fourteenth century.
And with his iron bar he broke the head and necks of many raja and drove them to the dust of defeat.1
The Furusiyaa Collection has a group of four such maces published in the book, Arts of the Muslim Knight, by Bashir Mohamed (2008, p.257, cat.no.247). Robert Elgood also published four such maces from the collection at the Jodhpur fort, India, in the 2017 book ‘Rajput Arms & Armour’, (2017, p.780 and 787).
Provenance
Private collection USA
References
1Elgood, Robert, Rajput Arms & Armour, Vol II, 2017, p.780.
