Is this a Firangi ?

[Nihl]

I’m a bit late to this thread, so maybe this will work as a “soft revive” and get discussion going again. The main info I want to contribute here I’ve actually already spoken about in a previous thread, but I’ll quote it here for convenience:

In my opinion, while "firangi" is a legitimate term, it's a bit too vague to use these days when talking about indian swords. Sure, there are plenty of swords with "firangi blades" out there, but since we now know that copies of European blades were paired with hilts just as often as authentic ones, it makes no sense to rely on "firangi" as a sword type when the swords described, from a glance, have a 50/50 chance of actually being accurate to the term. Meanwhile, the term "dhop" makes no such distinction, and instead is defined (from what I can tell) as just a basket-hilted sword with some kind of long and often - but not always - fullered blade. The term "asa shamshir" indeed is more northern in origin, but I would say it's an accurate term to describe any straight-bladed, basket-hilted "firangi". In my mind, firangi is a good way of marking an indian sword as having a trade blade (i.e. saying "this is a firangi-bladed pata, tulwar, etc"), when used as a descriptor/shorthand that would indeed signify that that sword has a blade of european origin, but I think it is too vague of a term to use as a standalone type of sword.

The term “dhop” that I reference was discussed in the thread linked above as well, but in short Dhop is basically the marathi term for a basket-hilted cavalry sword. I regard it to be the most authentic and accurate term for describing these swords (including the one posted at the beginning of this thread by drac), as, like I stated in my quote, it does not make any prescriptive judgements about the actual origin of the blade, which experts (or “experts”) can argue over for days without coming to an actual conclusion.

In regards to using “Firangi” as the standalone term for a sword - It’s worth noting that, historically, most Indian people cared more about the blade of their swords than the hilt. This makes sense from a utilitarian perspective as of course having a good, strong blade, will always be more useful than a super fancy hilt in a life-or-death scenario on the battlefield. As such, it would make sense historically that, when asked, Indian people would pretty much exclusively describe their swords by the blade - that the blade is firangi, sukhela, sirohi, etc.. I could be mistaken, but I believe most of these accounts never mention any natives taking time to describe the hilts of their weapons, and I think this is the reason why.

The reason why I’d consider this “hilt blindness” to be problematic for collecting is because it only tells half the story. Contrary to what was the norm in the 19th century, hilts in precolonial India often had explicit regional variations and styles. Artisans in one state/empire would largely only make a single type of hilt, and there were no real "generic" styles of tulwar or basket hilts being made. Of course, commoners most often only had access to undecorated, utilitarian versions of these hilts, but even then most styles have enough physical changes from one another that it's still possible to tell them apart (namely in terms of the styles of pommel, langet, and quillon terminals). As such, while it’s hard work, discerning what type of hilt a pre-19th century indian sword has can greatly reduce the geographical range it can be attributed to.

Of course there is always the issue of trade, but imo this is a whataboutism, and is neither helpful nor meaningfully contributes much to the research of these matters. Is it possible a sikh nihang at one point in time wielded a 17th century, thanjavur-style pata in battle? Sure! In fact, I know I’ve even seen them in pictures of Sikh arms collections on sites like Instagram, but this is all due to trade and is NOT related to where an item was made or “came from” (which matters when trying to figure out what its original name was).

So, back to hilt blindness and the term firangi. What is a firangi sword? A sword with a foreign blade, sure, but with what type of hilt? The term does not specify. What about a dhop? The term Dhop specifies a few things: that the blade is long, fullered, can be straight or curved, and is mounted to a basket hilt. IMO “firangi” is just a descriptor, something to be added on to a name to help further describe an item. Dhop, for reasons that are hopefully clear by now, is imo a proper name and a superior standalone term than firangi when used to describe a style of sword.

Put perhaps more concisely: Firangi only describes the form that a sword's blade might have, meanwhile Dhop is both more generic and more encompassing. It specifies the style of blade and hilt that the sword should have, without constricting either to an exact point of origin.