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Originally Posted by Jens Nordlunde
Marius,
It is interesting about the rubies and the green glass, I wonder why that is?
Do you think the silver was made to cover a fault? Maybe the dagger was once dropped, or do you think it is to compensate for the short tang?
Jens
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About rubies and green glass it is a rather common occurence on Indian daggers as rubies were and still are very easily available in India (with massive reserves in Sri Lanka) while emeralds are not.
Regarding the silver mounting, this is a presentation dagger and definitely not a fighting dagger.
In fact, all stone-hilted daggers are not fighting daggers but merely dress/presentation daggers (unless they are full tang). While very hard, stone is at the same time rather fragile and simply dropping the knife on a hard floor may crack and break the hilt, rendering the knife unuseable. This is even more true for rock crystal/quartz which is quite susceptible to cracking at even moderate shocks. This combined with a very short tang mandate for a mounting that would brace the hilt and prevent it from cracking if a shock is applied at an angle relative to te axis of the tang.