Hi Richard,
Nice to hear from you:-).
I have seen no accounts to that they belong together. However, why make a 'fish tail' alone? The way I see it, they must have belong togher.
No, I dont know if these loops only were made locally, but I find it very unlikely, this was made all over India.
In old texts you can read what will hapen if the sword rattels in the scabbard. I seem to remember that someone in your family will die, so imagine if a sword falls out of its scabbard - you would likely be the one to die - it does say in the texts, but it is a very long time ago since I have read them.
A sword is quite a long thing, and the blade quite heavy, so I have difficulties to imagine how that would happen, but if you are superstitious enough, almost all can happen.
I think scabbards, other than the one dressed in leather, had a cord to tide the sword to the scabbard with. This would be fine, and could be changed when needed, but on a leather scabbard, when the loop was broken - that was it.
What makes me wonder is, that the makers of the leather scabbards did not make it easy to change the loop - when it broke, as we can see on many scabbards that it did.
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