Deccan tulwar

[ariel]

Ren Ren,
I am a bit flabbergasted by your comments.
First, I never claimed that Zheng He's trips were the source of Chinese swords entering India. It was simply in response to Mercenary's assertion that China had no direct contacts with India till at least 16 century. This was patently incorrect and maps of Zheng He's travels confirm it. As a matter of fact ZH died in Kozhikode ( Calicut in European sources). The categorical assertion that "This version is so weak that it is not worth wasting time even explaining the reasons for its weakness" is a bit too glib: had it not been so evasive and supercilious, I might have even been insulted. But I was not, so do not worry about it.

Then, you find fault with me using the term " Normans", even though I explicitly mentioned that several names were used in different sources, from Normans, Norsemen, Rus, Vikings, Varyags. It is not how we call them, but where they were from: Scandinavia.

After that you invoke some conclusions from maritime archeology to assert that ZH's fleet did not carry weapons as gifts. This was not supported by any references, locations, dates, sufficient number of shipwrecks examined etc.

And now you totally reject the possibility ( not even probability!) of maritime exchange between China and India. Please pay attention that I explicitly mentioned common land borders between the two as a potential point of contact. But the existence of early maritime contacts is also irrefutable. Interestingly, you yourself mention that " Moghulistan" in the 14th century had trade relations with India.

Your hypothesis that Tibetan Kirthimukha was the inspiration for some Indian quillons is intriguing. But please realize that these motives were used on the swords that Emperor Yungle ( the very same who sent ZH on his journeys !) and even his predecessors gifted to Tibetan monasteries (see book of La Rocca). Thus, it might not be impossible that some of those swords reached India very early on either by land or ( potentially!) as ZH's gifts to Indian nobility.

There is no need to digress into long descriptions of things that do not bear any relations to the topic of current discussion ( such as genealogy of Babur's mother etc). And some attention to the comments that are the targets of your critique as well as some thinking about your responses might also be beneficial.
With best wishes,
Ariel

[Mercenary]

"According to Simon Digby, the evidence given by Fakr-i-Mudabbir in Delhi in the early thirteenth century suggests "a trade in arms extending through the medieval Islamic world from Europe to China" with European blades usually being considered sharper and better than Indian ones" (с)

In real:

the author of the manuscript calls Indian swords the best of all kind of swords

Originally Posted by ariel

It was simply in response to Mercenary's assertion that China had no direct contacts with India till at least 16 century.

In real:

Originally Posted by Mercenary

There was no direct influence of Chinese culture to Indian one in the 16th century, only indirectly through Iran and Central Asia. If something of Chinese appeared in the Deccan, it first had to appeared in Iran.

And how much we were told about the scientific discourse and the rules of academic activity.

[Ren Ren]

Huurra! I was lucky and I found a photo of the original Mongolian helmets! Attention to the visor!

[ariel]

Mercenary,
You are correct: I used a stenographic style to cite your text, and just wrote about simply contacts vs. cultural influence. Can you support your assertion with some evidence? IMHO, it would be difficult to assert that ZH’s 300+ vessel flotilla visiting India with a specific goal to bring multiple gifts to the local “rich and famous” did not bring about at least some cultural novelties.

You might be too young to remember, but a single International Youth Festival in Moscow in 1956 had changed Russian youth’s way of dressing, their haircuts all over the country etc. Not even mentioning a large number of newborn children who did not look Slavic at all :-) Soviet satyrical journals have noticed it immediately with a flurry of caricatures and newspapers published one article after another about “poisonous influence of Western culture “.
And I am not even talking about “MickeyD”, i.e. Mc Donalds.


That is how cultural changes penetrate: local elites with access to the novelties adopts them first and then they trickle down to the lower social strata.

[Mercenary]

Tom Nichols. The Death of Expertise:
"All things are knowable and every opinion on any subject is as good as any other".

The non-expert knowledge is constructed fragmentarily and linearly. Separate, fragmentary facts just put on a straight time line and a conclusion is made at the end. For example:
1. The Chinese fleet reached India in the 15th century.
2. There is a sword similar to the Chinese in the Deccan in the 16th century.
3. Local elites with access to the novelties adopt them first and then they trickle down to the lower social strata.
4. So, somewhere after the 16th century, the peasants in the Deccan have been armed with Chinese weapons (we know that the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence).

Another example. In an album with illustrations of Indian weapons, the author in a stenographic style refers to the image of Yogini in a secondary source ("Yoga: The Art of Transformation", very scientific ) and proves that the Indian axe "bhuj" was existed in India already in the 10th century. Here is the image on the museum website:
https://collections.artsmia.org/art/...th-a-jar-india
Any expert in the field of Indian culture knows that the images of the Yogini always follow the canon and she can only hold a mace or a sword, but not an axe. If you look at the image from a different angle, it becomes clear why the author misled (perhaps he did not have the Internet):
https://images.artsmia.org/wp-conten...a_60074381.jpg

An expert in the field of Deccan culture of the 16th century knows how strong Iranian cultural influence was in this region during this period. Noblemen, scientists, atist and Sufis were invited from Iran and Central Asia. The elite was represented by Shia Muslims, Indians and even Africans. It was the leading cultural center of that time, influencing the whole of India. Rather, the weapons of the Deccan would have got to China than vice versa. But there was the influence of Chinese culture through Iran due to the "porcelain way". But it was a more complex phenomenon and this is not for discussing here.

I am with Jim:

Originally Posted by Jim McDougall

However, the 'langet' shape in the hilt structure of this without the expected quillons seems to align more with the khanjhar daggers of which many are attributed to Deccan

And it will be better to discuss item posted by werecow
http://www.vikingsword.com/vb/showpo...49&postcount=3
because your item from the auction raises questions.

Just for curiosity. A composite style:

[Mercenary]

Originally Posted by Mercenary

I am with Jim:

More examples:

[ariel]

Re. Your penultimate post.
In the list on top of it, points 1,2,and 3 are correct.
But to call Qutb Quli Shah a “ peasant” would be a slight exaggeration.
Overall, this list is ‘true, true and not related”. All cultural novelties trickle down to a certain socio-economic level and stop there. There are still countries where significant portions of population have no indoor toilets, would you believe?

As to the example from werecow, wouldn’t you agree that its rudimentary quillons look suspiciously like Chinese “chi”?

The item from the auction I have shown indeed raises questions. That is exactly why I asked one:-)

The intricacies of the rest of your message are well above my level of interest. As they say, “What was the middle part?”
Although i know some “ yoginis” who should not be allowed to carry not only axes, but even manicure tweezers:-)

[Ren Ren]

Originally Posted by Mercenary

Tom Nichols. The Death of Expertise:
"All things are knowable and every opinion on any subject is as good as any other".

Some time ago, I already recommended to one of the participants in this thread to pay attention to this wonderful book. Now my intuition tells me that I will have to do this more than once

[ariel]

Expertise by definition requires full-time involvement, professional education, vast knowledge, experience and stellar track record. Anything less than that defines an amateur.
Neither I nor you ( at least I hope so) would like to be operated by a part-time medical assistant.
I am an expert in neuroendocrinology, but happily refer patients with metabolic bone disease to a bone/calcium expert even though theoretically I am certified to take care of them, and my diabetes colleagues send their patients with pituitary disease to me from all over the US. Family or criminal lawyers would never take a case of medical malpractice or maritime law. As a rule, real professionals take the issue of “expertise” seriously.

I am perfectly happy considering myself a dilettante and listening to the opinions of people like Robert Elgood, Denis Toichkin, David Alexander, Don LaRocca and (regretfully late) Leonid Tarassyuk.

Regretfully, this is not always the case within the antique weapons community. There, as the old Russian saying goes, “[almost] every gofer considers itself an agronomist”.
There are very few examples of people lacking first two qualification of an ‘“expert” ( see above) who nevertheless added a lot to our knowledge of weapons. Ronald Ewart Oakeshott created the established classification of medieval swords, Jens Nordlunde is a world authority on Indian katars, Kirill Rivkin wrote an almost Darwinian book of history and evolution of a saber and , of course, the incredible “ private researcher from Kutaisi ( Georgia)” Levan Dvalishvili who moved the history of shashka back to 17th century and destroyed a myth that it was an ersatz weapon of poor people, meticulously found actual documents of the best known Georgian armourer Geurk Elisarashvili and his sons, immediately proving that many swords proudly exhibited in major museums and private collections were posthumously marked with his spurious signatures, and an astonishing paper about weapons of Southwest Georgia.

I know little to nothing about other ethnic areas such as SE Asia, Indonesia and Philippines, Japan and China, but am sure that there are other “private researchers” whose names were omitted by me out of sheer ignorance. To all of them, my sincere apologies.