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Originally Posted by mahratt
Hi, Jim!
And how do you feel about the opinion of Rawson, who believes that the basket hilt form is of Indian origin?
"The Hindu Basket hilt was developed in the West Deccan round about 1500 AD. It is a formal development from the Old Indian, in that the fundamental pattern of grip, guard, seating process and pommel is preserved "
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Actually, your note, as I highly respect your skills at research, made me think to reconfirm what I said. So I spent several hours with Pant, Rawson and Elgood
In Pant (p.49) he notes that Rawson indeed did state the basket hilt was of Indian origin.
"..it is probable that this development took place in the western Deccan about 1600AD and was promoted by contacts with European basket hilted swords".
I then went to Rawson, who indeed did discuss the pata and khanda (p.45) where he notes both of these straight blade swords were invented in the west Deccan and diffused into other regions by the Marathas.
Further, "...the Hindu basket hilt, a development of the old Indian, was foreshadowed in the hilts of the sukhelas illustrated in the miniatures of the Deccan sultanates".
Then on p,44 re:sukhelas
"...the hilts of the sukhelas shown in the miniatures from the sultanates are of varied forms and have the traditional circular Indian pommel with dome as the old Indian and Indo-Muslim hilts have, but they have a broad knuckle guard , NO DOUBT IMITATED FROM EUROPEAN EXAMPLES". (my caps).
Elgood ("Hindu Arms & Ritual", 2004, p.39) notes, "...the 'Nujum al Ulum' illustrates a Spanish or Portuguese sword of about 1570 with its distinctive European hilt, and describing it as 'A GOOD SWORD'. "
Elgood (op.cit. p.39) notes, ",,,giving arms as diplomatic gifts was commonplace and it seems a reasonable assumption *that European blades were reaching Vijayanagara via the Portuguese on the coast from the beginning of the 16th c. and judging from the number mounted on the best worked hilts in the kingdom, THEY WERE MUCH APPRECIATED AT COURT".
* this assumption is indeed reasonable with the number of European blades found in the Tanjore katars.
Pant (1980, p.61),
"...Rawson calls dhup, sukhela as the same weapon and says that if the blade is of foreign origin the term phirangi is applied to such a sword. The blades of this type were continuously imported throughout the late 16th c into the 17th by the European factories on the west coast .
It is probable that the European blades were FAVORED first because their form was long familiar in the Deccan and because there was little good iron and steel working in this part of India (ref. Rawson p85)".
Pant (op.cit. p.42) re: firangi,
"..literally it means 'the Portuguese' since it was first introduced by them in India but later on it was successfully adopted by the Marathas".
So apparently, the khanda/firangi basket hilt did in fact ORIGINATE in India..but the point was that it was developed from the old Indian sword, but INFLUENCED by the European styles.
Thank you Mahratt for prompting this recheck on this detail !