Is this a Firangi ?

[drac2k]

Generally when I think about a Firangi, what comes to my mind is a straight foreign European-made blade, however, this one has a sweeping curve and almost seems to resemble a Chinese Dao. The blade is 31" long.

[mahratt]

I think it is correct to call such a saber not firangi (a firanga has a straight blade), but "alemani", on behalf of the German mercenaries.

[werecow]

IIRC firangi just means foreign, so a Chinese blade would qualify.

[Jim McDougall]

Indian sword terminology is challenging, at best.
If I have understood correctly, a sword with Hindu basket hilt and with a curved blade is termed 'kirach'. If it is with straight blade it is termed 'sukhela', in the Maratha counterpart of the straight blade but gauntlet hilt 'pata'.

If the Hindu basket hilt has a straight foreign blade, it call be deemed a firangi (=foreign blade, as noted), but it does not seem the firangi term is generally applied to curved bladed swords or patas.

In the north of course, the curved saber is termed tulwar, regardless of Indo-Persian hilt or Persian style (shamshir) hilt. In the native army in British service sabers are called tulwars even with three bar hilts.

As Mahratt notes, the alemani term was used in Deccan and southern regions where German mercenaries were active with of course curved sabers.

Three tulwars:
First, the familiar Indo-Persian hilt, Rajasthan
second, Persian type grip, Deccan, M1788 British Lt. Cav. blade
third, Native cavalry, 21st cavalry Frontier Force, by Mole.

In Indian parlance all termed tulwar, as far as I have known the firangi term is not applied with tulwars.

These are my interpretations, and I would be glad for any corrections or additions.

[werecow]

FWIW, according to a Bengali friend of mine, pata just means sword - like many of these collector's terms I suppose.

And I was under the impression that the term kirach referred more specifically to a slightly forward curved (but not recurved) sword, like this one:

[Rick]

Originally Posted by werecow

FWIW, according to a Bengali friend of mine, pata just means sword - like many of these collector's terms I suppose.

And I was under the impression that the term kirach referred more specifically to a slightly forward curved (but not recurved) sword, like this one:

Yes and some more than slightly forward curved.

[ausjulius]

Originally Posted by werecow

IIRC firangi just means foreign, so a Chinese blade would qualify.

no firangi are white men.. blonde haired blue eyed northern europeans.. as the original arabic and persian meaning denotes.
in thailand for example farang is not a nationality but a race. many italians would not be farangs but all swedish would be.
indians use of farangi means northern europeans as in its orignal arabic influenced context or "europeans" in general for the most part. in indian farangi is a white european person. a farangi blade is a blade from white european people.
farangi are "francs" i.e blonde, blue eyed tall people with white skin from europe- exotic barbarians.. the term predates arrival of european ships in india by a good while and arabs used it already in the 8th century.

[werecow]

Originally Posted by ausjulius

no firangi are white men.. blonde haired blue eyed northern europeans.. as the original arabic and persian meaning denotes.
in thailand for example farang is not a nationality but a race. many italians would not be farangs but all swedish would be.
indians use of farangi means northern europeans as in its orignal arabic influenced context or "europeans" in general for the most part. in indian farangi is a white european person. a farangi blade is a blade from white european people.
farangi are "francs" i.e blonde, blue eyed tall people with white skin from europe- exotic barbarians.. the term predates arrival of european ships in india by a good while and arabs used it already in the 8th century.

Ah, yeah, now that you've mentioned it, the "francs" connection rings a bell (and makes a lot of sense). Thanks for the correction! }|:o)

[Nihl]

I’m a bit late to this thread, so maybe this will work as a “soft revive” and get discussion going again. The main info I want to contribute here I’ve actually already spoken about in a previous thread, but I’ll quote it here for convenience:

In my opinion, while "firangi" is a legitimate term, it's a bit too vague to use these days when talking about indian swords. Sure, there are plenty of swords with "firangi blades" out there, but since we now know that copies of European blades were paired with hilts just as often as authentic ones, it makes no sense to rely on "firangi" as a sword type when the swords described, from a glance, have a 50/50 chance of actually being accurate to the term. Meanwhile, the term "dhop" makes no such distinction, and instead is defined (from what I can tell) as just a basket-hilted sword with some kind of long and often - but not always - fullered blade. The term "asa shamshir" indeed is more northern in origin, but I would say it's an accurate term to describe any straight-bladed, basket-hilted "firangi". In my mind, firangi is a good way of marking an indian sword as having a trade blade (i.e. saying "this is a firangi-bladed pata, tulwar, etc"), when used as a descriptor/shorthand that would indeed signify that that sword has a blade of european origin, but I think it is too vague of a term to use as a standalone type of sword.

The term “dhop” that I reference was discussed in the thread linked above as well, but in short Dhop is basically the marathi term for a basket-hilted cavalry sword. I regard it to be the most authentic and accurate term for describing these swords (including the one posted at the beginning of this thread by drac), as, like I stated in my quote, it does not make any prescriptive judgements about the actual origin of the blade, which experts (or “experts”) can argue over for days without coming to an actual conclusion.

In regards to using “Firangi” as the standalone term for a sword - It’s worth noting that, historically, most Indian people cared more about the blade of their swords than the hilt. This makes sense from a utilitarian perspective as of course having a good, strong blade, will always be more useful than a super fancy hilt in a life-or-death scenario on the battlefield. As such, it would make sense historically that, when asked, Indian people would pretty much exclusively describe their swords by the blade - that the blade is firangi, sukhela, sirohi, etc.. I could be mistaken, but I believe most of these accounts never mention any natives taking time to describe the hilts of their weapons, and I think this is the reason why.

The reason why I’d consider this “hilt blindness” to be problematic for collecting is because it only tells half the story. Contrary to what was the norm in the 19th century, hilts in precolonial India often had explicit regional variations and styles. Artisans in one state/empire would largely only make a single type of hilt, and there were no real "generic" styles of tulwar or basket hilts being made. Of course, commoners most often only had access to undecorated, utilitarian versions of these hilts, but even then most styles have enough physical changes from one another that it's still possible to tell them apart (namely in terms of the styles of pommel, langet, and quillon terminals). As such, while it’s hard work, discerning what type of hilt a pre-19th century indian sword has can greatly reduce the geographical range it can be attributed to.

Of course there is always the issue of trade, but imo this is a whataboutism, and is neither helpful nor meaningfully contributes much to the research of these matters. Is it possible a sikh nihang at one point in time wielded a 17th century, thanjavur-style pata in battle? Sure! In fact, I know I’ve even seen them in pictures of Sikh arms collections on sites like Instagram, but this is all due to trade and is NOT related to where an item was made or “came from” (which matters when trying to figure out what its original name was).

So, back to hilt blindness and the term firangi. What is a firangi sword? A sword with a foreign blade, sure, but with what type of hilt? The term does not specify. What about a dhop? The term Dhop specifies a few things: that the blade is long, fullered, can be straight or curved, and is mounted to a basket hilt. IMO “firangi” is just a descriptor, something to be added on to a name to help further describe an item. Dhop, for reasons that are hopefully clear by now, is imo a proper name and a superior standalone term than firangi when used to describe a style of sword.

Put perhaps more concisely: Firangi only describes the form that a sword's blade might have, meanwhile Dhop is both more generic and more encompassing. It specifies the style of blade and hilt that the sword should have, without constricting either to an exact point of origin.

[ariel]

Originally Posted by drac2k

Generally when I think about a Firangi, what comes to my mind is a straight foreign European-made blade, however, this one has a sweeping curve and almost seems to resemble a Chinese Dao. The blade is 31" long.

Well, it depends on how you interpret " firangi". I you translate it as " foreigner", it will include the entire panoply of European blades imported to India over several centuries. If you, however, limit your translation to " Frank", it will relate mainly to the earliest Portuguese rapiers and later French, Spanish and Italian imports. In India these import blades were called "jahaji", from Persian " jahazi" , a " ship", since they were delivered by sea.

But what is almost certain, it is not an " Alemani", i.e. French word for "German". German blades were exported to India en masse starting in the ~17 century. Their characteristic feature was the presence of three narrow fullers close to the spine (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y31Cocl3lOs; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnCHNChUobo). Same 3-fullered structure is seen on German exports to Aravia, North Africa, Eastern Europe etc.

Yours has only one fuller, and it is difiicult to claim its German origin: it is either non-German European or, quite likely, native Indian imitation of a European sword. And the latter were abundant. European blades often had original markings, whereas their locally-produced imitations had either no markings whatsoever, the crude " jaws" or illiterate inscriptions. Any on yours?

European sword blades enjoyed excellent reputation in India: even Aurangzeb, among his 27 personal swords, had 2 with European blades:
" Diamond" and " Conqueror of the World" ( "Alamgir"). The reason for their high reputation and desirability was their uniform reliability: Indian swords were produced in multiple workshops, and very ofther were made of wootz. There was no quality control and the blades varied between excellent and dismal. European exports were manufactured by professional guilds that carefully preserved their reputation. On top of that, their mass production resulted in lower prices. Thus, the buyers had a choice: a gorgeous and expensive wootz blade of uncertain quality or a cheaper and highly reliable one. And if they " kept it sharp and hit hard", the outcome was predictably highly satisfactory:-))

[ariel]

I agree with virtually every Nihl's and Jim's positions, especially with Nihl's insistence to call bladed weapons whenever possible by their original names used by their original owners . By the same token, we need to clean our vocabularies of all European-invented names at least in the academic discussions /publications. Again, some " invented " names have contaminated the field so widely, that many, if not most, poorly-informed collectors and dealers are simply unaware of their mistakes. Let them use those in private conversations, but let us, the informed, try to adhere to historical academic standards. Perhaps, their true original names will re-acquire their correct places and the " invented" ones will painlessly disappear to everybody's satisfaction.

The " salavar yataghan" is an example: it consists of a mistranliteration of the native " selaavah" and a totally artificial addition of " yataghan". The latter, as Nihl correctly noted is an addition of an unrelated term simply because of theit common recurved blade.
Interesting to note the Deccani Sailaba, a short recurved sword with T-structure, Kazakh Selebe, a straight short sword, a South Siberian Suleba ( morphed into Russian Selebka). This suggests a common Turkic origin of the name and the weapon itself and deserves academic attention. That is the value of the despised " name game": the word-name points out to the origin of the object, and this is an important goal of the historical research.

[drac2k]

There aren't any markings on the sword, however, based on how it is affixed to the hilt, they would probably be covered if there were.

[Jim McDougall]

Well said Ariel, and while often difficult, there is value in the discussion of proper terms (aka , name game) as participants bring in research in rebuttal and elucidation, thus expanding the information at hand.

It is often interesting looking at our own language, and how many words have either dropped away, or often gained entirely different meanings through generations. While certainly in scholarly work, it is preferred to use proper terminology presuming that the readers are well informed enough to know what is being referred to specifically.It seems there is typically no shyness in using footnotes just the same for further reference and certainty in semantics.

In more casual discussions, as here and other, typically the well known terms that have been firmly become accepted in generations of writers help readers unaware of discrepancies fully understand the items referenced in the dialogue. For example if I were describing the transverse grip dagger of India as JAMADHAR, many readers would not realize I am referring to the KATAR.

In reading earlier accounts and narratives referring to the Scottish claymore, it is typically regarded by the initiated as the large two-hander used by Highlanders, however often the Scottish basket hilt is described in many references as a 'claymore'. Clearly there is a world of difference in the swords meant, and the reader is given a complete misconception.

The term broadsword is often used rather collectively prior to the 19th century in many period accounts describing a sword (most Scottish swords were termed broadsword whether double edged as meant or single edged).
There are so many dated terms in the English descriptions of swords as well as nomenclature it is virtually impossible to describe them all here.

With ethnographic weapons, transliteration, colloquial or vernacular terms take these issues to another dimension, and though exaggerated (in frustration) one authority on weapons of certain native regions exclaimed, the name for these changes almost village to village.

It is a tall order, but I do agree, every effort to bring these arms terms up to date and correctly applied must continue. As these efforts advance, I think it is incumbent on the writer to ensure the alternate or previously held terms are adequately noted as we move forward. In time these terms will become properly known and placed, with the former terms noted as historical footnotes as items of associated interest.

[Jerseyman]

Frustrating though the "name game" can be, one thing this forum does extremely well is to keep asking the questions, pushing the research, adding layer upon layer of information and incrementally pulling the picture of each weapon context into clearer focus. It can be a contentious process sometimes but no less valuable for the occasional verbal tussle.

However, this is a large forum encompassing a broad body of knowledge, and the search function is sometimes, through no fault of its own, not as forensic a tool as one might wish; sometimes purely through not knowing what term to search for.

Is there any merit in creating and perhaps pinning a thread, the sole purpose of which would be to create a snapshot of the current state of thought regarding the terminology of weapon nomenclature?

It could be divided geographically, list the common misnomer and then the currently held terminology with a link to the most relevant recent thread, and perhaps even a thumbnail reference image.

For those who care it would be an easy quick reference guide to stay au fait with the current thinking. I often struggle to stay up to date as my collection is eclectic and I can't keep all the threads in my memory. But I agree with Jim, Ariel and Nihl that it is an important element of our study and purpose.

Just a thought.