Tulwar Hilt Types

[Jim McDougall]

Thank you so much guys for the kind words and encouragement! It is truly heartening to see the interest in Indian arms and armour drawing new interest and while there has been a great deal of study done, there is clearly so much more to be done.

Mefidk, most interesting approach and extremely well placed suggestions!
It does seem that many weapon groups have been discussed and considered in these kinds of considerations, such as the development of the sabre; the flyssa of Berber North Africa; the Kastane of Sri Lanka and numerous other ethnographic forms.
As for European and regulation military weapons, the same types of taxonomical approach is often used in a sense by associating features and elements of hilts of various countries and looking for influences by comparison.
Often interesting examples of the joining of ethnographic and military forms are seen, which leads to fascinating examples.

In this regard, there are numbers of instances of this with tulwars for example with the Native regiments of the British Raj. I have seen examples of British made tulwars (by Mole of Birmingham) as well as regimentally marked specimens.

Getting back to the subject of classification, I have always been a firm believer in comprehensive study of many subjects in researching a weapon or group of weapons with certain similiarities, but find the suggestion of classification in biological terms absolutely intriguing. Up until now, I had only thought of that perspective in terms of convergent evolution

As is well known, the movement of blades cross culturally via trade, warfare or colonial presence, and combinations of all of these, has brought wide diffusion worldwide to them. The study of hilt forms is typically a matter of local preference, though certain influences transmitted in much the same manner as blades cannot be discounted.

There have been many efforts to try to establish certain classifications for tulwar hilt forms, pribably one of the most well known being the work by Dr. G.N.Pant, "Indian Arms and Armour". While the examples shown in this work reveal certain styles of hilts of tulwars having a degree of consistancy, the classifications assigned can probably be best described as somewhat arbitrary. The intense diversity of ethnicity, religions, cultures, languages, tribal warfare and colonial incursions of many world powers are just the primary dynamics which reflect the constant state of flux constantly present in the colorful history of this fascinating nation, ironically also presents many challenges in the study of her weapons.

While these factors offer exciting opportunities in researching these weapons, in many respects they present undeniable barriers as well.
The diffusion of hilt forms in tulwars is one of the ever present reasons why it is difficult to assign regional classifications to thier variations. The examples with known provenance in early works ,by Egerton for example, are noted by the region from which they were presented. This meant that these specific examples may well have been indiginous to the region from which they were brought...but then again, may have been collected from the battlefields as described, or perhaps had been gifts or holdings in the local armoury from elsewhere.

The only remedy for this conundrum is typically noting significant volume of like provenanced examples, which would establish the likelihood that a certain type or style of hilt actually was prevalent in that region. With this, the next hurdle is to determine the 'morphometrics' with examination of examples that might reveal progressive dates or periods to discover chronological development of the form.

Again, thank you guys for joining in here! And while many of you note you are new to this field of collecting, please remember here we are all students....and we learn together by sharing. Please submit any examples and questions openly so that we might all gain by discussing them.

All the very best,
Jim