As you can see from my first post, the authors are not in agreement about the width of a finger, as one writes 3/4 in. and another 4/5 in.
Not that it makes much difference, but I see that I have made a mistake - as I wrote that the best sword should be 100 fingers, and that would be quite a sword to handle - the correct number is 50 fingers. I also wrote that the nimcha should have a blade of 50 fingers - it should of course be 25 fingers - sorry for the mistake.
I find it interesting that the author of The Wonder That was India writes that 8 barly corns are equal to a finger, but how can we be sure that barly corns now and then had the same size?
To the Indians, at the time, it would be natural to use barly corns for a measure, and then say it was equal to a finges width.
To use a fingers width alone would make the measuring very uncertain, as it is likely that the sword smiths fingers would be broader than the fingers of the on who ordered the sword.
I also find it interesting that the length of the different blades are given, but not the way the blade is measured.
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