Ancient, armed Indian from Kabul

[Andrew]

Originally Posted by B.I

well spotted, ariel. it seems that i dont know the armouries anywhere as well as i thought, and that my trips there are spent looking in the wrong direction :-)
unfortunately i dont have a better image (or a worse one either) but it seems to give the original post a different outlook. maybe it was as first assumed, but your new evidence seems just as plausable. would the dha experts give their opinion. the armouries piece (i am assuming) is in no way typical of burma, just heavily influenced (? i'm guessing here). then, is the illustrated dha typical in form or possibly some sort of hybrid.
although relatively late in date, the great exhibition gave us a definate starting point in back-tracking. the only faults are assumption of course. the stands held collections as well as items for sale/examples of stock. if the description given at the time was on an older piece/antique, then this can only come under assumption of the knomledge known at the time. however, most of the pieces there were examples of stock and so we can normally bowl ahead.
attached is from the armouries and is an example of lahore armour. again, a description by a museum is in no way evidence, but these pieces were brought back by Login fron the sikh courts and so we can verify their origin, especially when compared with evidence from the great exhibition.

Hi Brian.

Actually, I think the Armory's knife is quite typical of the knives seen in Burma and Thailand. The fullered blade and scabbard fittings, in particular. The sole "odd" characteristic of the type is the horn handle which appears to be faceted. Normally, the handles of these knives are slightly bulbous or cylindrical, sometimes dependant on the material used.

The sword in Jens' photos really doesn't look like anything other than a long-handled Thai darb to me. The distal end of the handle (i.e. that portion visible above the subject's hand) is unusually slim, but I'm not discouraged by what is perhaps just artistic interpretation.

I do tend to be hasty in my observations, however. I'm interested to hear what the other "dha guys" think now.