There are glossaries in both of his "indian" books. As usual, both were meticulously researched. I can safely bet that he discussed the entries with native specialists.
For an endeavor like that, especially if the topic is a multiethnic society, one needs equal fluency in languages as well as deep knowledge of history in general, local crafts and , - in particular,- weapons per se
But eventually it is the language that will be presented to the reader.
I just got an English version of the Turkish book "Sultanlarin Silahlari". Shock to the system! The author/translator had no understanding of elementary weapon terminology in English. Took me quite some time to figure out that the word "fuller" indicated the ... entire blade:-)
Glossaries serve as precision tools for a multitude of researchers and need to be obsessively accurate. Their authorship needs to be left to superspecialists of Elgood's caliber. Amateurish forays into phonetic similarities, imprecise translations and erroneous definitions are bound to confuse generations of well-meaning readers and researchers.
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