It's a nice silver plated tulwar you are showing, and the plating seem to be rather thick. I don't know from where it is, but a good guess could be Deccan or south Rajasthan.
Hello Timo,
It is said that good weapons in India are more expensive that in Europe, and this may be right, but the tulwar you describe is a rare thing – very rare. Besides, you might have been able to convince him that you were only a poor tourist who would like to help him, so he could feed his family. So in order to help each other, he would have to reduce the price
.
Of all the weapons made in India, only relatively few were high quality weapons, so good Indian weapons are not cheap, and they get more and more rare, as some ends up in museums, never to get out again, while others end up in private collections where they may stay for 30 or 40 years, or maybe even longer.
How these blades were made I don’t know, but as far as I recall, neither Sachse in ‘Damaszener Stahl’ or Hoyland and Gilmour in ‘Medieval Islamic Swords and Swordmakers’ writes anything about it. Personally I think it was a master sword maker showing off.
Jens