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Old 30th May 2019, 03:40 PM   #1
Jens Nordlunde
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Join Date: Dec 2004
Location: Europe
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Default A katar is a katar till......

This is not an invitation to start a new 'game of the name', but I find it interesting all the same.
In Arms and Jewellery of the Indian Muguhuls by Abdul Aziz a plate with weapons is shown from A' in-i-Akbari (Akbar r. 1556-1605) - see the plate below. In this case it is nos. 5, 10 and 11 which is of interest. The text to these three numbers goes like this.
No 5 jamdhar, no 10 narsingh-moth 8 (according to Blochmann, in the plate the name is pesh-kabz) and no 11 katara.


All three we would happily call katars, but in the 16th century things seem to have been more complicated. It is interesting to see how little a weapon had to change before the name changed - especially when it comes to nos 10 and 11.
Pant wrote that a katar is not a katar, it is a jamdhar, and this seems to be correct, but only when it looks loke no 5.
Maybe it was Egerton, or maybe not, who 'collected' all there different daggers, and used the name katar.
As we dont know all the different names used for these daggers, my suggestions is, that we go on using the names katar/jamdhar and no other names, as it will only make the confusion bigger.
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