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Originally Posted by Jens Nordlunde
The discussion about tulwar's with straight blades, is to my opinion wrong. As far as I know a tulwar is a sword with an Indian hilt and a slightly curved, and relatively broad blade. If the blade is less broad and more curved, it is a tulwar with a shamshir blade, and if the blade is straight, it must belong to another group.
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Thank you Jens, that is somewhat reassuring, that my complacency and presumption that this was the case was at least properly held in degree.
But now I'm confused, would this suggest that the dhup is essentially a khanda with altered form of hilt, somewhat of tulwar form?
And the term sukhela actually refers more to the type of steel used.
The straight blade sword of Tipu it seems used the term, but again, it was a sword of state, with an open hilt 'tulwar'style hilt.
It seems that semantics and linguistics with terminology really play havoc in trying to discuss and classify these weapons.
While the term shamshir in India applies to the deep curve and narrow (typicall unricassoed) blade on sabres of various hilt forms, it seems I have heard that the term in Persia is widely applied to swords in general, with qualifying descriptive terms added.
The term 'tulwar' itself is also supposed to be a rather collectively applied term in the Indian language for sword, derived from the Persian 'paluoar' for a curved blade I believe. Naturally that term as spelled in that way is used to to describe the Afghani sabre of Indo-Muslim hilt form with drooping quillons.
Maybe Shakespeare was right?
A tulwar by any other name is still a.......uh.....a....uh????
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All the best,
Jim