Ancient, armed Indian from Kabul

[ariel]

Originally Posted by Andrew

Thanks for posting that, Ariel!

I think, however, that the museum's attribution is dubious. Given the provenance that apparantly came with the knife, one can hardly blame the museum, but I've never seen such a knife reliably attributed to India.

Ariel, is it double edged?

It is single edged.
As to the attribution, I guess the curators of this Armoury (an offshot of the London Tower) know a thing or two about the origins of their exponates and have a record to prove it.
I see no reason why the Rajastani origin is such an implausibility: after all, French copied the Nimcha , the Russians made splendid Yataghans, the Vietnamese swords were influenced by the Japanese etc, etc. People saw blades they liked and made copies with the local flavor.