radu, yes i took what you said to hint at a more pure indian association rather than a persian one, which i kept coming across. virtually all my resources are indian, with some persian which is hard to avoid. it this search for this particular 'symbol', i struggled to find it at all in india, and yet it kept cropping up all over in the few persian books i have.
i think that we will continue to clash, whereas in reality, we probably agree. you do boldly state information, whereas i am a annoyingly cautious. sometimes it is better to throw yourself in the deep end as people may disagree, but you are at least provoking a response, which is never a bad thing. the whole indian thing is open, as it has always been. i tend to question everything, especially the known resources like egerton. if you look at his history, you'll find that he was in india for many years, but maybe being in one part of india during one period cornered his knowledge and left him dependant on the known information of that particular area, which no doubt differed to other areas. this is why there are contadictions in many of the 'known experts'. dont get me wrong, he still wrote the most important book on indian arms, even over a hundred years later.
the obvious answer is to try and back track information. this can be done with authours like rawson, as his references still exist and are accessable to those that have the time and inclination to spend researching. earlier authours are harder to track down as a lot of the information may have been widely circulated at the time, but were never written down. hendley spent more time in india and had a stronger passion for indian decorative arts, but still used egerton as a base, although there are still differences in opinion due to being in a different part of india and tapping into different resources.
i suppose there are no real answers. there are studies done in the last few years that have almost started again and tried to avoid the influence of earlier writers. elgood is a good example, although he has also fell victim to assumption of known information. i hold zebrowski quite highly, in that he pushed barriers and changed the way people think about indian art. not easy to do in a world full of experts! there are also many unpublished 'experts' whose knowledge may not be academic, but is just as important. there are some that have heavily participated in the collective world and in doing so, left a distinct mark without most people even realising it. for their own reasons (mostly personal or finantial) they spent many years in india studying the arms to a level that their academic peers reached many years before. this knowledge is as important, if not more so in this day and age, as they were present in the 'emptying of some major armouries.
i have discussed the floral thing with jens in the past and it is a hard subject to approach. the naming of flowers is almost impossible as it is down to artistic interpretation. robert skelton wrote a great article on the floral aspect of mughal art and yet there was no real conclusion. written history tells us shah jahans passion for the lotus symbol, but who is to say what the lotus symbol really looks like. i haave seen some very un-lotus looking lotuses
there are answers of sorts which can be tracked down through 19thC accounts. i strongly believe in symbolism being retained in a particular area. koftagari, as an applied art tended to be regional. this can be seen in hendleys great works, and also in watts exhibition catalogue. i approached this in parts years ago and although mostly shooting in the dark, i managed to produced slight results. i tracked down a style of flower inherant in lahore work, by finding pieces i know definately came from that area (bought brand new in the 1851 exhibition and the parisian exhibition a decade or so later. the same style of flower exhisted a century earlier in some pieces that reportedly came from the same area which bolstered this theory. also, the dalhousie connection with the courts and his 1991 sale couldnt stand on its own, but as additional ammunition confirmed many doubts i had.
also, another style of flower (un-named) which i found in the wallace reserves. this had a very distinctive cross within the central bud. the catalogue (written by opinion only) claims a kashmir and a rajesthan origin (two examples, virtually identical from different regions??) again, i found this flower in pieces with definate accession to the great exhibitions and a confirmed (from 2 different sources) origin of sailkot. i suppose this can be taken further, as with the lahore chrysantheum (??) if earlier pieces can be found. unfortunately, there are very few definate resources. the exhitions were great, in that they took time to display their wares by region and they were not selling antiques, but 'modern' examples of current decorative arts. hendly also is a great resource for this as his passion was the decorative arts of the time and he took the trouble to note the origins and names of the craftsmen. a lifetimes work with spurious results. but, as i said before, its all shooting in the dark.
i hope that ricks flower will be found on other pieces, as the quality lends you to believe that the craftsmen were talented, and so maybe produced other work of similar ilk.
the V&A is a fabulous source of information, as it was the original south ken museum, and before this, the east india company museum. the original pieces still hold relatively accurate accession notes and the pieces aquired before egertons catalogue can be quite accurately traced. many pieces were bought as 'brand new' and these can form some sort of stability in a shaky minefield of dis-information.
ok, back to the sword in question. look at the tigers head on this persian axe. it is more defined with a more distinct profile, but the similarities are there. it has the same open mouth, filled in with continuous decoration. if anything, it opens the mind to other sources for a 'tiger' motif away from mysore, which most people tend to assume too quickly.