That would be a most plausible assumption as during British colonial presence and the Raj covering well over a century and a half, there were huge numbers of souveniers brought into Great Britain and throughout the Commonweath.
There were the largest dispersals at the clearing of many of the arsenals in many of the princely states in the latter 19th century, but hard to say just what period or circumstances brought the most of these into general circulation.
The thing with Indian arms is that after Egerton, and in minor degree certain other established collections in museums, they were not widely collected by general public nor particularly studied as with European arms and armor .
It was not really until Rawson (1967) that the field began to attract specific attention by private arms collectors, but that remained restrained in degree by the lack of resources and information, beyond the venerable work of Stone (1934). Thankfully in the years since Rawson, authors like G.N.Pant; Jaiwent Paul; Robert Elgood and others including researchers like our own Jens Nordlund, have added great dimension to the corpus of knowledge we have on these arms.
As always, the research never stops, so thank you for joining the quest!!
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