British hilted sword with Indian(?) blade

[RSWORD]

I always find it interesting when you have a hilt from one culture and a blade from another. One can find Indian blades mounted in British hilts. One also finds many British blades mounted in Indian hilts. Here is an interesting example that has some unique features worth discussing. The shamshir blade has a most interesting feature near the hilt. The blade has been sandwiched with two steel plates. The plates look to have been koftgari'ed at one time but most of it is worn off. The plates do not serve any functional purpose so I wonder what the intent was. I have only found this feature pictured on one other sword. It is pictured in Stone's and referred to as Salapa.(p. 537 figure 688). That example even has similar scalloping as my example. Why do this? If one wanted to simply add koftgari then why not to the blade? If one wanted to add support to this section of the blade why not forge it thicker? The hilt appears to be British and I would venture a late 18th, early 19th century guess. A real neat combination and makes my imagination run as to how they came together.