Battle axe from India, Asia. Part of the Pitt Rivers Museum Founding Collection. Given to the Museum in 1884.
This large battle-axe consists of a crescent blade fixed with three iron ring sockets to a metal-banded, wooden shaft. It is associated with the Khond, a non-Hindu, militarised people of the Orissa in central India. The Khond used such axes, together with knives, to hunt bears and, until its suppression by the British in the mid-19th century, to dismember living human sacrifices to satisfy their creator deity, Darni Penu.