Decoration on Indian blades

[Jens Nordlunde]

I like the Indian blade with carvings, the animals are not made stiff, they are moving, and you can see it – true artists make carvings like this.
Most blades showing animals fighting or walking in procession are hunting swords, which of course does not mean, that they could not be used for other purposes. On both sides of the blade is an inscription, one in Farsi and the other one in an Indian dialect.
A strange thing is, that the hand guard can be screwed off, but it is clear that the screw thread is handmade. In Leo S.Figiel’ On Damascus Steel, pages 104-5, you can see a hilt very much alike, but whether this hand guard can be screwed off is not known, as he does not mention anything about it.