Tibetan dagger

[Philip]

Originally Posted by Tatyana Dianova

The fittings are steel, brass and ray skin; total length in scabbard is 45 cm. The blade is made from the pattern welded steel with the pattern resembling a hairpin pattern. There are three iron cones side by side on the top of the handle which look like a tang extensions (because they go through the top sheet). Does somebody know their meaning or is it only a decoration? Can somebody give their opinion on the age of this dagger?

Congratulations on a very nice example of this type!

The flat pommel with three cones is typical of hilts on daggers and swords from the Kham region of eastern Tibet, along the frontier with China. They don't seem to have any role in holding the tang of the blade to the hilt; I once restored a sword with a missing cone, and its mounting hole in the pommel didn't go deep enough for the purpose. The sword's pommel was built up of plates of iron and copper, and it appeared that the tang was peened to one of the lower sheets, and the cones served as pins to hold the top one or two layers in place, covering the peening.

I would say that 19th cent. or turn of the 20th would be a safe bet on assigning age to it. Seems that a lot of daggers and knives from this cultural area were as much utilitarian as symbolic, seeing regular use so that their survival over centuries was more the exception than the rule. Rather like Nepalese kukris, or Bedouin jambiyas. I've seen Tibetan short swords with extremely worn blades in ratty scabbards and grimy hilts that looked like they had seen a lot of service. There is one historic travelogue whose author I can't recall at the moment, was it Rockhill (?) who observed that a Tibetan nomad would put his sword to whatever use that necessity demanded, such as digging holes in the ground.