Help wanted Identification of Katars

[Andrew]

Excellent post, Brian. Thank you.



Rob, a great wealth of information resides in this forum and its archives. The membership here has a broad base of experience from collecting to research.

However, the study of ethnographic weaponry is often a rather esoteric and exotic pursuit. Poor documentation, extravagent and incredible provenance, colonialistic perspective and language barriers all contribute to the unanswered questions. It was this very lack of reliable information that first attracted me to ethnographic weapons and continues to keep me engaged and intellectually stimulated. While such things as militaria and nihonto have always fascinated me, there are few "mysteries" left to explore in those areas.

These forums are often a good starting place for research and investigation, as well as a place to share knowlege, experience and speculation. I once described the process as "edged weapon free-association" (or something similar). I truly hope you'll stick around and share more with us, despite your obvious disappointment. You may yet find the answers to your questions, or even to questions you've not yet thought of.

Best,
Andrew

[geneacom]

Ridk, Spiral, B.I. and Andrew, thank you very much for your support!
Your very interesting explanations are helping me to better understand the problems.
Since I am completely new and uneducated to this matter, I have learned a lot since I joined this forum.
You reply is giving me the necessary push to go on.
I will start publishing new pictures tonight.

[Jens Nordlunde]

Hi Rob,

Thanks for showing the katars, but as you can see from the different mails, last from Brian’s excellent answer; it is very difficult, if not impossible, at the moment, to come up with something specific about the translation. What we can conclude is, that the katars shown, most likely, have been at the Bikaner armoury at one point or another, but not necessarily were ‘born’ there. If you have read a few books on the Indian history, you will know, that wars were going on all the time, from east to west, and from north to south. Big armies moving around the country all the time, weapons getting mixed, and remixed before they ended in an armoury somewhere, and maybe years later ending up in another armoury after a lost battle.

The thing of interest will therefore be, does the katar fit into the area where the armoury is, or is it likely to be from another area?

As your brother has been collecting for twenty years, I guess that he is likely to have some answers to this.

If you post any more pictures, please help us to a better understanding, by keeping the pictures of the whole weapon and the details together. I have no doubt that you and your brother have no problem seeing the pictures, but it will make it easier for the rest of us who don’t know the weapons.

Jens

[geneacom]

Every day I learn more and more, thanks for all your support and kind help.

Here is the last katar for now.

I have to make new photos next week.
Actually, I started to make pictures only from the 3 katars with text on it plus 2 katars which I like very much (the small one with the ivory knobs and the largest one I could find in my brothers collection).

Enjoy and I'll be back ...

[geneacom]

I found a table with the figures 0-9 in different languages.
Maybe this will help? It is an Acrobat PDF-file.