Thanks, Nishedha (and Ali and Ann) for your help.

I think you're right, Nishedha, in that this probably must be a bull that Hanuman is biting. I've thought that for the most part ever since I bought the knife twenty years ago, but was persuaded quite recently that it was more likely a deer by a Thai friend who pointed out that bulls traditionally in SE Asia are portrayed as having wide and long horns (like the one on the modern Carlsberg statue in Kampong Cham). He was quite right; that's how bulls almost always appear from the stylized horns on Ban Chiang bells right the way up to an Angkor era bull (attached) on the inscribed stone plinth of a seated Buddha figure in Angkor Borei (where this thread began).

That is - with one exception. The exception is Nandi, Shiva's mount, who is generally shown in an Indianized style with relatively short and close-together horns (see an attached bronze from the Phnom Penh National Museum). So, is the bull that Hanuman is biting Nandi? I think, possibly, yes. There's no such story in the Ramayana, but one of the symptoms of the Ramayana's immense popularity is the way in which is has spawned so many side stories. There's an intriguing hint in Philip Lutgendorf's fascinating book, Hanuman's Tale: The Message of a Divine Monkey (OUP, 2006), where he tells us of one of the many birth stories of Hanuman:

"Nandi, Shiva’s bull, is an embodiment of his (Shiva's) eleventh Rudra-manifestation. During Ravana’s campaign of univeral conquest, he attacks even Mount Kailash, where he encounters Nandi. Although himself devoted to Shiva, Ravana cannot resist making fun of Nandi’s animal shape and laughingly remarks that his face resembles that of a monkey. In anger at this insult, Nandi curses Ravana to eventually die through the intervention of monkey-faced beings. Later, he requests of Shiva the boon of expressing his devotion through the lowly monkey form, and incarnates on earth as Hanuman, the bull among monkeys."

So Hanuman and Nandi are in some versions of the story very closely linked. That still doesn't fully explain what is happening on the knife, but I think it does suggest that the scene is probably more playful than warlike, two divine animals from opposite ends of the spectrum interacting. Perhaps what is shown is yet another of those many local side stories that keep on proliferating, even to this day in Kampong Cham.

Finally, to everyone else, who is quite rightly feeling that this has nothing to do with beads, my apologies for having dragged us down yet another rabbit hole!

Cheers,

Will