ritual container

Ram's horn, "t'un-rva", used both to cure and to curse. The carvings depict various animals including a scorpion and several snakes. The tip of the horn is carved as a makara head and is stopped with a wooden plug. There is a blue and white woven strap threaded through an aperture at the tip of the horn which would have also have been threaded through the wooden stopper.

T’un rva are used by quasi shaman Tibetan doctors (especially amongst nomads). They are still used in off the beaten track places like Mustang. They are used symbolically: they can be placed upon the patient’s body, or they can be laid in a building in a special way. - Zara Fleming 2015.

object
MUSEUM NUMBER
18.3.66/1
PLACE
COLLECTION
MEASUREMENTS
overall: 250 mm x 56 mm x 42 mm
MATERIAL/TECHNIQUE
textile; horn; wood
CATEGORY
Anthropology: Ethnography
LOCATION
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Collection Information

These objects are only a part of our collections, of which there are more than 350,000 objects. This information comes from our collections database. Some of this is incomplete and there may be errors. This part of the website is also still under construction, so there may be some fields repeated or incorrectly formatted information.

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