Steve, nicely noted and great images graphically illustrating. With this being the case, I would suggest perhaps deliberate attempt at imitating some of the auspiciously featured elements on certain Islamic swords such as the more notably serrated edges on the dual bladed Dhu'-faqar.
Often weapons have had deliberately placed features such as notching and piercing for reasons that elude conclusive answers. On Austrian cavalry swords for example, many 18th century examples had a deliberately placed notch near the tip of the blade.
While that example of course has nothing to do with this, it simply illustrates that many times deliberate features such as this have no apparent practical purpose, yet may have powerful temporal meaning symbolically. On the other hand, they could simply be poor imitations of such features on other known swords
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