Indian bagh nakh (tiger claws)

[estcrh]

Originally Posted by Roland_M

I wonder how the first weapon will be used.


One of my books says, that the intention of the bagh nakh is to simulate a tiger attack, to hide an assassination.


Roland

Roland I have read this is a couple of 1800s references. If you were an Indian national and you planned on killing a Britich national it would have made sense to try to make your crime look like the work of an animal.

I have also read that the bagh nakh was used in a type of one on one ritual combat.

"The Art of Attack: Being a Study in the Development of Weapons and Appliances of Offence, from the Earliest Times to the Age of Gunpowder", by Henry Swainson Cowper W. Holmes, Limited, Printers, 1906.

Wagnakhs are described by Rousselet (1864) as being used in combats held by the Gaekwar of Baroda. The antagonists were nude, intoxicated with hemp, and tore each other so that they often bled to death.