Tulwar with Koftgari

[mariusgmioc]

Originally Posted by ariel

Elgood, in his Jodhpur 2-volume book, shows quite a bit of khandas and Khanda blade.
There are straight Khandas and curved Khandas, with and without edge-located strengthening plate, with and without widened tip.. In short, none of the classical uniformity of Stone’s book.
I was confused and wrote him an e-mail. His response was that the same swords carried different names in different parts of India and that different swords carried the same name.
If we accept that explanation ( presumably based on his historical evidence and old catalogues of weapons in multiple armouries) our simplified ( or over complex) classifications may be wrong.
Several days ago my daughter and myself went into Indian store to buy her beloved India-produced boxes of spiced sauces. There were literally dozens of varieties , each with its own name. All were identical color and taste wise: red and unspeakably hot. One could not detect whether his dish was chicken, shrimp, beans, lentils or potatoes: everything was pure pepper.

Colonel Flashman had the same impression of Kama Sutra: position 54 is the same as position 53, only with your pinkie curved.

Hola Ariel!

I am pretty sure Elgood was right... in some ways. However, he might have been wrong in others, depending on the criteria we consider. In any way I do not believe that we should dogmatically follow his writings, or Stones' as a matter of fact.

In Turkey all swords are "Kiliç" that would translate to kilij. But does this mean we have to call all Turkish swords "kilij?!"

Even the term "Tulwar" is used in some parts of India generically, for all types of Indian swords. Does this mean that we better call all Indian swords "tulwar?!"

So the question is: shall we use the ethnographic traditional denominations or shall we strive for clarity?!

I think that if we go for the the ethnographic traditional denominations, we may end up with a lot of confusion, without even being able to be ethnographically correct because very often:

1. we do not know exactly the ethnographically correct name;

2. the very same weapon would have different names in different geographical regions;

3. in many instances, very specific weapons only had a generic, umbrella name (like the generic kilij=sword in Turkey).

So, I believe we should strive for clarity and try to allocate specific names to specific weapons while trying to be only reasonably close to their ethnographic names.