Hi Brian,
Thanks very much!! Its really good to have you posting on this as your expertise on India arms and armour overall is extremely important on this anomaly.
As I reviewed the Robinson notes it seemed that the description of the fabric armour may apply to this illustration. I will be the first to admit that I have less than familiar perception on armour and chain mail, and looking at the illustration the coat and the headgear seemed very textured. I had always regarded chain mail as less than tightly woven, with links easily perceptible.
This seemed almost brocade in appearance...between the image and probably needing a tuneup on my glasses !!
In any case, I think we are clear on Rajasthan being likely for the major part of the gear.
Returning to the most unusual element of the anomaly ..the dha.
Nice work Ariel!! bringing in that dagger from the Royal Armouries and with attribution to Burma is extremely interesting in relation to this discussion.
I think that often one of the most confounding issues in studying weaponry is items in museums that are collected from armouries or collections of high ranking or regal individuals of key regions and miscatalogued. It seems that weapons received as gifts or presented to such persons can sometimes become associated with various other weapons not necessarily from the same place or cultural sphere (thinking of certain items in Calvert's descriptions of the Royal Armoury in Madrid). I tend to think such an error highly unlikely however in the Royal Armouries.
I recall our discussion of some time ago where we noticed a photo of Red Cloud, one of the Sioux Chiefs from the Battle of the Little Big Horn in his home c.1880's. On the wall behind him was a Japanese katana, something incredibly misplaced on the American plains! We concluded this must have been the result of such diplomatic gift giving while he was in Washington, and the weapon probably had gotten there from some previous Japanese diplomatic mission, known to have been occurring about these times.
I keep wondering about who may have done the cataloging on the Tzarskoe-Selo collection, and more on the provenancing. I had hoped some of the early arms writers may have noted something, but in checking Boutell, Demmin, Burton etc. only the collection as a reference is noted. Burton was quite open about his opinions on previous writers and grumbled at Demmin's noted inaccuracies, while curiously duplicating some of these errors in some of his own work.
As has been noted, errors are certainly not unusual, and a museums holdings will occasionally (hopefully not often) reflect errors that are a result of the misgroupings described. Since Rajasthan was extemely active in arms production, and actually still is, it might be presumed that trade from such volume of production may have brought diplomatic contact with regions distant, and possibly gifts of weapons even as exotic as from Burma.
It is worthy of note that some of Afghanistan's warriors did actually have a guardless sabre, the shashka. While these were somewhat uncommon deep in Afghanistan, they were certainly known in the border regions near Uzbekistan and it is often difficult to discern Uzbek from Afghan examples of these sabres typically associated with the Caucusus. Obviously the dha illustrated could never be mistaken for a shashka, but seemed worthy of note. An artist unfamiliar with weapons that was trying to recapture a guardless sabre may possibly ? have used a dha that was handy in other weapon groupings. I think this case would be about as far from Occams Razor as one could get
but when we hear hoofbeats lets not forget the zebras!!!
At this point I think I've run speculation to the limit, and you guys will probably have me admitted to the tabloidism ward....but had to say it anyway.
Best regards,
Jim