Prominent chieftains depicted as ferocious wild beasts

A joint paper by Sudyka and Pontillo focuses on the long life of some frequent literary rūpaka-compounds, such as narasiṁha or puruṣavyāghra, which are supposed to constitute a sort of sphragís of the archaic Indo-Aryan warrior brotherhood, i.e. of the so-called vrātya culture, according to the results of some recent research by Yaroslav Vassilkov. From the technical (grammar and poetics) point of view, the authors verify whether these expressions can actually be interpreted as identifications between a mighty animal and a powerful king or a terrifi c warrior, at least as far as the original Vedic contexts are concerned. The durability of this kind of imagery – above all of the lion–warrior association – is testified by the occurrences taken from Sanskrit mahākāvyas and medieval inscriptions, where "the ‘lionness’ of the warriors creates the aura of wonder and admiration for their heroism" in every being, and causes uncontrolled fear in their enemies. What is more intriguing is the consistency of the animal symbolism involved in the depiction of this kind of warrior in Vedic, Epic, and Kāvyapoetry, and some features of specific Bhakti-rites documented (especially by Sontheimer’s research from 1980 onwards) among the semi-nomadic pastoralist tribes in Deccan and south India, devoted to a god who is also simultaneously the leader of the young warriors’ group