British Eat India Co. Cavalry Pistol

[Jim McDougall]

Originally Posted by kahnjar1

Hi Jim,
The fact the number reads 83 in Arabic is coincidental. The point is that it is most unlikely that any British pistol would be marked with Arabic numerals of any sort, in this way, if it was the genuine British made article.
The initial purpose of this thread was to establish if this was a GENUINE EIC pistol, or a copy. The Arabic numbers are part of that evidence.
Stu

Hi Stu,
Thanks for the response. I agree, it is unlikely that any pistol made in England would be unlikely to have Arabic characters. However, if in fact reworked or altered by EIC oriented shops in India, it seems quite possible that such marks may have been added.
While Arabic itself is not one of the many languages or dialects predominant in the Subcontinent, it would have been in use in Arab populated regional situations, much in the way French is used in parts of Eastern Canada.
With the alphabetic or numeric nature of characters, the commonality between dialects and languages in certain examples are sometimes indiscernible in degree.

I think that it what is so confusing about analysis of the hybridization of many Indian weapons, there are many qualifying factors especially with EIC .

I was surprised to even find that even Liege comes into play with a marking of the rampant lion very similar to the EIC (post 1808) type, even the line underneath the feet, but the lion faces right and is not holding crown etc.
I have never seen one of these, but found it in a drawing in Gardiner's compendium of small arms makers.

Best regards
Jim