There is a problem.
We got our education from Egerton, Stone, Pant, and more recently from Pail and Reddy’s books.
However, they all stem from Egerton and repeat each other. Khanda always has spoon-like tip, streghtening plates along the sides and a basket handle. But look at Elgood’s Jodhpur book : there are several “khandas” that have nothing in common with the traditional description. I asked him about it, and his response was convincing ( at least for me): that term was used locally for different swords, over millennia, in different localities, religions, languages etc. On the other hand, Bich’hwa stemmed from Mysore and Hyderabad, but it was called Baku in Kannada and Vinchu in Marathi.
Some years ago we had a topic on Phul-Kattara and the author changed his definition of it every couple of days.
The same Firangi from the South became Dhup in Maharashtra and Asa Shamshir up north.
I bet that some swords transported from Adoni to Bikaner changed their names several times along the way:-)
Elgood told me that he had a collection of cards with info on ~30,000 weapon terms mentioned in Indian archives.
India is a huge multiethnic country with millennia of history, innumerable wars, hundreds of ethnicities, and languages. And I am not even talking about religions, influxes of Arabs,Turks, Afghans, White Huns, Mongols and who can remember the rest….
Our books are just scratching the surface and some known names do not even have physical examples: how about Kalachurri? We think that curved swords were brought by Babur, but there were Indian sabers centuries and centuries before that. What were their names?
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