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Message:: [QUOTE="John Anthony, post: 2522262, member: 42773"]Taking real images today. As THCoins states, the chicken is the Hamsa bird on a Cambodian coin - not ancient, c. 1847, but as I said, I like modern coins made with basically ancient techniques. These are simple, uniface coins, struck without a collar obviously. Small, but of good silver, the denomination is 1 Fuang. Robin Danziger of Educational Coin has an elegant write-up on the significance of the Hamsa bird... The Hamsa bird, a swan of Cambodian myth, has been a sacred animal to Hindus for three millennia, and figures prominently in the Upanishads, the Hindu holy books written circa 900 BCE. Prized for its ability to gracefully navigate three elements—it walks on land, flies in the air, and swims on water—the Hamsa bird is the mount of Saraswati, the Hindu goddess of knoweldge and the arts. Legend has it that the Hamsa eats pearls, and that it lives in water but does not get wet. The first syllable—ham—is the sound of the intake of breath; the second syllable—sah—is the sound of exhalation. In this way, the Hamsa bird represents the prana, the cosmic breath so integral to the practice of yoga. The name of the bird is a Sanskrit play on words. When used as a mantra, the syllables ham and sa become soham, Sanskrit for I am the universe. Thus the bird represents the Supreme Spirit, the Brahman,from which all of the universe is made, and its flight represents the soul escaping from samsara, the cycle of birth, life and death that is repeated through reincarnation. Good luck, purity, enlightenment—all of these are symbolized by the Hamsa bird. When you hold this coin, metaphorically speaking, you have the whole of the universe in the palm of your hand. -Robin Danziger [ATTACH=full]537967[/ATTACH][/QUOTE]

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