Karava Heraldry - The White Shield

The White Shield

The white shields known as sak paliha or conch shields were also important royal symbols in Sri Lanka's history. The Karava ancestral flag illustrated above displays two of them. The sak paliha was a white shield sometimes with the devise of a conch shell on it and is referred to frequently as a royal symbol in Sinhalese historical texts. According to the Portuguese historian De Couto, it was also used as a royal symbol ( JRASCB XX 187 ).

Read more about this topic:  Karava Heraldry

Famous quotes containing the words white and/or shield:

    “The next forenoon we went to Oldtown.... The Indian is said to cultivate the vices rather than the virtues of the white man. Yet this village was cleaner than I expected, far cleaner than such Irish villages as I have seen.”
    —Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    “Vice is its own reward. It is virtue which, if it is to be marketed with consumer appeal, must carry Green Shield stamps.”
    —Quentin Crisp (b. 1908)