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Originally Posted by spiral
If any tulwar were kept dissasembled, {something I personaly find hard to belive, but cannot disprove. dispite the fact it would logisticaly be a nightmare.}} they would only be the very lowest quality pieces for volonteers & conscripted peasents, as after all all the Marajahs, kings & major landowners whatever, had there own proffesional standing full time army & troops.
Spiral
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Hi Spiral
This is contingent, as can be relative to the period at question.I will better revert with a strict and exaustive translation of page 189, that refers:
''' The main charateristic of this arm is little known, but rather interesting. Apart from individual arms that were manufactured for high rank personalities, more simple tulwars were also produced, in large quantities, for the Sovereigns arsenals. Invasions, popular insubordinations and palatial revolutions were very frequent. Few were the Sovereigns that dyed of natural causes. The state of war between ones and others was a frequente situation. In this atmosphere it became obvious that the possession and access to the arsenals were a preocupation of the greatest priority. A system was invented that impeached the possibility of using an Indian arsenal from one moment to the other. The handles of tulwars were built in metal ( usually iron ), joining guard, grip and pommel in one only piece, which doesn't happen in the majority of white weapons of other origins, where all these components were separated one from eachother. As tulwars handles were one only part, it became easy to join all these in one arsenal ( we are talking, in round numbers, in the order of the one hundred thousand handles ), and build a tower where these could be well kept with "seven keys" (
my commas , for a Portuguese figure of speech ). In another tower, distant from the first one, the respective blades were kept. When a sovereign decided to invade a neighbour country or prepare himself to defend his own, such event would be known within months of antecipation, which allowed for the mounting of the blades in their handles. Such blades had a short tang, which was neither peened, screwed, or stuck by a pin. To couple the blade with the grip, the late was turned upsidown, pouring in into his hollow part heated pitch, therefore liquid, as the blade was inserted. Once the pith cooled down, the blade would be fixed enough for battle, during years. In case it started to oscilate, the fixing system could allways be repeated. A strategic Sovereign would know how much time he needed to mount his army weapons and, taking precaution, had his arsenals ready in due time for the distribution of tulwars. In case of a mutiny or a palatial revolution, there was no time to mount the tulwars, in a manner that the arsenals were relatively protected from improper utilization.
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As a curiosity, i have read in pages 244/255 of the same book that, between the XI and XVIII centuries, only twenty six out of the sixty four Industani Sovereigns left the throne due to natural death. As for the other twenty eight:
13 were killed (Gheias-oo-dee by his son and Seyed Mobarik at the mosque ).
8 were deposed/killed.
2 were deposed and blinded.
5 were deposed.
2 were deposed and expelled.
2 dyed in battle ( Ibraim Lodi in Paniput ).
1 was poisoned.
1 was emprisoned and killed.
1 dyed by accident.
1 fled after military defeat.
1 abdicated.
... Did i fail anyone ?
fernando