Khyber Knife or Churra
 

Hi, I have attached pictures of two similar Afghan style weapons. They are from Bihar in India. I was wondering if the smaller of the two is what is called a Pesh Kabz, or both are Afghan Churras of different sizes.
Thanks,
ASingh

GREETINGS A.SINGH
The Khyber knife, or short sword, is also called “Charay”, “Churra”, and sometimes “Salawar Yatagan”, ...which is much longer like a sword
yours is the shorter churra
Regards Rajesh

Both items - Khyber knife, which some people call in Afghanistan "Churra".

Can anyone please fully translate the script on the forte shown?

With thanks

Gavin

Translation from the Devanagari script: Shrimaan Raja Chandreshwar Prasad Narain Singh Bahadur Raj Maksudpur

I must admit this is the first time I have seen Devanagari on one of these!
Thoughts on this?

Jim,

I am no linguist, that's for sure but a quick wiki read noted the following;
The Devanagari script is used for over 120 languages.

Seeing as though it is the Alphabet of India and regions surrounding these wild north western frontiers, it doesn't seem out of place, much like some Kukri with clear Afghan influence and Tulwar seen in the hands of Afghan soldiers, it just seems to be the norm of the melting pot up there.

Gavin

I cannot substantiate what I have searched out regarding the script but if I read it correctly there is reference to the following people

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chande..._Narayan_Singh

http://www.indianrajputs.com/view/maksudpur

Gavin

Churra is an Indian word, no one in Afganistan calls it that.
I would call the smaller one a pesh qabz and the larger one Khyber.

It's not quite right, my friend. Waziristan - this is part of Afghanistan? I think no one will argue with this statement? Here are the data dictionary Waziri-English.

Pesh are recurved, karud is the straight version. To me the small one looks like a khyber.

Of course you're right. Pesh are recurved, karud is the straight version. Here we see a small Khyber knife.

The answer can be easily found in Stone: khyber knives (Salawar yataghan, churra, churai etc) "... have blades 14-30 in long."
Size doesn't count ( at least here), it is the general outline of the blade.
Mine are 11.5; 15; 17.5; 21; and 22.

And let's not forget the " Karud "-type blade with a peculiar " eared" pommel: afghani (Mahsud) dagger colloquially called Chura, i.e. just "knife"

Same idea, different roles and ethnic variants of pesh Kabz.

This is a good example how the infamous " name game" can be useful: name the object and its entire engineering becomes obvious without additional explanations or images.