Unusual South Indian Sword

[ashoka]

"Not an unusual piece, as an indian pattern, neither a very old piece. There are much older pieces, in every configuration you can imagine"

By any measure these straight swords are not common or 'usual', and 16th/17th century is generally agreed to be early, if going by R.Elgood's book with the dating. Finding Indian swords older than this is not especially easy, but of course there are older pieces existing. It would be interesting to hear your argument that this is not an early sword Gonzalo, thanks. Rawson's book is generally accepted as being fairly flawed as far as dating/descriptions go, but it does show some interesting museum pieces in the illustrations.