Charles,
A most interesting example you have there. This is the first example of a scarf weld in a Moro piece I have seen as well. There simply may not be enough in polish or polished examples out there to know I this was common, uncommon or that this is a one of. I can say you do see scarf welding outside of India. I have a 17/18th century Vietnamese Guom Truong that has a scarf welded blade. My understanding is that you can also see scarf welding in Japanese long swords.
The other interesting part of yours is that the portion of the blade nearest the hilt seems to have a finer lamination than the body of the blade. It also has some fine chiseling. Typically, on Indian swords, the metal nearest the hilt is homogeneous steel with the PW or wootz steel the other piece. One practical rationale for scarf welding is to conserve on material. To forge an entire billet from wootz requires a lot more material than what is needed in a scarf weld. In this case, you don't seem to have that thought so it becomes a bit more mysterious as to why this one was done.
Very interesting and I truly love surprises like this that can pop out from a good clean and etch!
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