Hi Rick,
Don’t let the katar bother you, the history is a bit defuse here, but I would say yes, the Indians, from ancient time, ruled over, at least, a big part of Afghanistan, or maybe you could say that they had a very heavy influence over a big part of the country. Had it not been like this, you would not find Afghan governors in places like Sind and even in Bengal, which is a very long way from ‘home’ for the Afghans.
True the katar is not normally a weapon you would expect to find in Afghanistan, but the text says that it is an Indian, so the rulers of India at the time could/would, most likely, have had one or more Indian garrison in Afghanistan, most likely in Kabul and Kandahar, to make sure the Afghans would not do anything the ruler would not like – or what is just as likely, to keep the Persians, and other ‘friendly’ neighbours at bay.
The ‘catalogue’ does not say anything about the age, and when they reprinted it, they photographed the whole thing down, so the text is rather small. One other thing you must keep in mind is, that old catalogues mostly lack a lot of information, and even some of the information they do give, must be taken with half a handful of salt. When it comes to the age I would not like to guess – but maybe someone else will.
The sword and scabbard are strange, if it is an Indian soldier showed, but I think that so much to the north you would be able to find many different kind of mixtures of weapons.
Hi Aqtai,
The Indian rulers were smart, they had different armies, which were used according to whom they were fighting at the moment, like a Muslim army would not be the best against the Persian king as they regarded him as their spiritual leader, so here they might use a Hindu army, and so on.
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