ipu, 'The Tiger of Mysore,' identified himself with tigers, dressed his men in 'tyger' jackets, and decorated his personal possessions with tiger motifs and leaflike, stylised tiger stripes (bubris).

The Scotsman, Major Alexander Beatson, noted (1800) 'He has been frequently heard to say that in this world he would rather live two days like a tiger, that two hundred years like a sheep. He adopted as his emblem of state, and as a species of armorial bearing the figure of the royal tiger, whose head and stripes constituted the chief ornament of his throne and of almost every article which belonged to him.'

On Tipu firearms, tigers prowl along the barrel, hunt or wrestle with their prey. Tigers glint on sword blades, and emerge as quillons and cascabels on swords and cannon. Upon Tipu's firearms and his banners, the Persian characters are entwined to create a tiger mask which proclaims ' asad-allah-al-ghalib' 'The Lion of God is conqueror.' The most imperious tiger of all was the central tiger-head of Tipu's golden throne, surrounded by jewelled tiger- heads at the corners of the low balustrade. Dedicatory inscriptions were often written in 'tiger script', in which the flowing curves of the Persian characters are transformed, with an extra loop, into bubris. The stylised tiger stripe or bubri is everywhere present - embroidered; quilted; painted; incised, and even forged into the watered steel of a sword blade. Tiger stripes were painted on the walls of Tipu's palaces, and of the mausoleum at Gumbaz, in which he and his father were buried.