Popping in again to give my 2 cents on what's being talked about.
Personally, I'm rather satisfied with the link to old decorative forms. As uninteresting as it may be, I concede that it does make the most sense. That said, I must raise the question as to what these beads or more broadly what necklaces or similarly decorated accessories meant in old Indian culture. A purely decorative motif is one thing, but when it's applied to humans all the time one (or at least I) can't help but think at some point it was given some sort of meaning. Another question - if the beaded edge (in A&A) is such a decorative motif, why is it not seen more frequently in status pieces (the belongings of royalty and so forth) and why are these beads not separately or distinctly decorated? My memory may be failing me on the former point, so feel free to post "museum quality" examples of beaded hilts and prove me wrong, but I can't recall the last time I saw a beaded hilt with any real fancy decoration. From what I can recall most extent hilts are either undecorated metal or covered in unbroken sheets of precious metal, instead of say, being decorated with koftgari in a manner separate from the rest of the hilt (gold covered beads but silver hilt, for example) or having actual jewels inlaid in the beads. Again, maybe there are some examples out there, but I at least can't remember seeing any. I guess I'm actually not fully satisfied with the beads being decorative just yet
Also don't want to distract from the latest topic of "why beads?", but I personally have nothing to add to that.