[ariel]

Jim,

Allow me to lift a veil of ignorance from your Texan eyes.

Slivovitz is a Central European plum brandy.

Realistically, they make brandy out of every fruit possible: plums ( Polish, Czech, Balkan Slivovitz), pears ( Hungarian Palinka), cherries ( German and Swiss Kirshwasser), apples (French Calvados), you name it.

Come to think of it, they also use grape skins and pips to make grape Brandy: French Marc, Italian Grappa, Balkan Loza, Balkan Rakija, Georgian Chacha and even Peruvian/Chilean Pisco.
These are all simple peasant drinks: aristocracy took the choiciest part of the grape, ie the juice, fermented it, ran it thru sophisticated distilling apparati, aged it in special barrels and sipped it slowly. Peasants took all that grape residue, or just cheap and plentiful fruits, mashed it, made a moonshine and gulped it like real men:-))

As you can see, the infamous "name game" is played not only by weapon collectors, but by us, old sots, too:-)

I fully appreciate Ian's and Jens' comments. I am just having a gut feeling that I might be right.

What is sorely missing, is a solid list of true Deccani examples with such handles.

Elgood has one.

Does anybody here knows of other examples: provenance would be crucially important.

Who knows, we may even make a Bollywood movie out of it, " The Adoni Conspiracy", with Danny de Vito playing Aurangzeb, Nicole Kidman as Queen Victoria, and late Rudolf Nureev as Alexander Borgia :-)