Hi Richard,
Its really good to see you posting!!! Its seems like a while since Ive seen you around.
Excellent question, and personally I used to always hope to find an EIC marked sword of any kind. There have been some good discussions recently on these markings which came up with a jezail RDG posted a while back, and it seems many of the locks on these turned up on these native guns put together in the Khyber regions.
As far as I have discovered, the only weapons ever marked with the EIC balemark were the gun locks usually on muskets, and on the bayonets in 18th century to the early years of the 19th. The balemark was replaced about 1807 or so by the rampant lion, though there may have been some use of the flaunched version in certain regions. Again, I am not aware of any such use on swords, either British or native.
I would be very wary of tulwars with such markings, and if seen, would really like to look further into them as distinct anomalies which might present new perspective on these balemarks in use. As we have discussed on occasion, the EIC balemark was often spuriously reproduced by native gunsmiths in Khyber regions, in many cases well into the 20th century on gun locks. We have even seen flintlocks with the balemark and dated in 1870s!
All the best,
Jim
|