The flowers on the tulwar hilts

[Ibrahiim al Balooshi]

Originally Posted by Jens Nordlunde

Ibrahiim, the thing about floral decoration is not only about the floral decoration about the time of Dara Shiko (1615-1659). THe floral decoration was used centuries before and after.
Some years ago I had a PM discussion with a member on this forum. The thing was, that he was a botanic, and he did not recognise the different flowers, but being a scientist, he would, of course, want more prof than shown on most weapons, and I respect him for this.
More artistic writers/scholars are freer in their judgement which flowers are shown on the weapons, but they also warn that the number of petals should not always be taken too serious.
So this leaves the rest of us guessing, but it is sure that the poppy flower was very popular, and so was the sun flower in the south.

Salaams Jens Nordlunde, I pause deliberately on the scope of time spanned by the Dareo Shikoh period since it offers the study of a certain spike in floral artwork and has an intriguing air to it surrounded by treachery and subterfuge so typical in the Machiavellian discourse inside the Mughal ruling family which would eventually end in disaster for the young prince who came very close to fusing together two great religions through his ideas on floral artwork/talsimanic expression etc.

In terms of the style we recognise as floral Indian work it is clear that the fashion ebbed and flowed across the period and according to various documents viz;

Quote''The floral and plant motifs predominate in the decorative repertoire of Mughal India. The combination of the naturalistic yet subtly stylized treatment of Mughal flowers, together with their balanced and symmetrical arrangement, is emblematic of Mughal taste in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when the floral motif became a leitmotiv that permeated all the arts of the court (textiles and decorative arts, arts of the book) and even architecture. This fascination with the floral motif can be traced back to the reign of the Emperor Jahangir. It originated during a journey made by Jahangir in 1620 to Kashmir, a country where the emperor was enchanted by the variety and profusion of the flowers which grew there, and which he was subsequently wont to describe as “a garden where spring reigns eternally”. During this trip the monarch was accompanied by one of the great masters of the imperial atelier of painting, the animal painter Ustâd Mansûr Nâdir al’Asr, who, at the request of the sovereign, executed more than a hundred flower studies, of which only three precious examples still survive.

This poetic delight in the exuberant blossoming flowers of Kashmir was reinforced by the discovery of European herbals brought to the Mughal court by Jesuit missionaries and agents of the East India Company''.Unquote.

For interest I added the final paragraph above to encompass botanical detail fed into the arena by The EIC...

It would therefor seem that although Indian work may have contained a broad spectrum of floral content down the ages that in fact these floral peaks and troughs included concentrated periods where the fashion was exaggerated no more so perhaps than in the Daro Shikoh time frame. I point to the 1630s as a key time frame when such influence blossomed viz;

Quote"Hindu decorative style would be influenced by floral art for centuries and become apparent in architecture, weaponry and virtually all forms of artistic work in the entire universal Hindu pallet of arts...In fact this was not always the case..Jahangir’s passion for natural history was not inherited by his son Shah Jahan and grandson Dara Shikoh. It was during the 1630s that flowers and floral arrangements with their decorative possibilities came to dominate Mughal textiles and the adornment of architecture and album pages. See http://blogs.bl.uk/asian-and-african/mughal-india/ '' Unquote.

Regards,
Ibrahiim al Balooshi.

[Jens Nordlunde]

Ibrahiim, what we have discussed so far are the decorations inlaid or in koftgari, but there are others - the steel cut ones, and they go back far longer.
At the same time I am not so sure, that the disc decoration and the hilt decoration are connected, they could be, but I have my doubt, as to me the disc decoration seems not to change in the same way as the hilt decoration does - after fashion.

[Ibrahiim al Balooshi]

Originally Posted by Jens Nordlunde

Ibrahiim, what we have discussed so far are the decorations inlaid or in koftgari, but there are others - the steel cut ones, and they go back far longer.
At the same time I am not so sure, that the disc decoration and the hilt decoration are connected, they could be, but I have my doubt, as to me the disc decoration seems not to change in the same way as the hilt decoration does - after fashion.

I have done a comparison on this thread looking at both hilt and disc pommels and find that most are of the same decorative form whereas a few are not of the same style. I conclude therefor that the two areas of decoration must be linked with a few exceptions.. Page 1 of this thread has many that are clearly linked. The pommel however does lend itself to a cyclic style simply because it is round thus sunburst form is common. I wondered if the general form of the pommel was related to the name Tulvar meaning flower and suggest that it looks similar to a poppy.

[kronckew]

somewhat more mundane mughal style bronze grip on one of my swords with cast in floral decor.

[Jim McDougall]

Mundane?? Very nice entry Wayne!
This looks very much Mysori, with the tiger head.

[Mercenary]

Some pictures:

[Jens Nordlunde]

Thank you for the pictures.
I think the research should include other decorated things, than weapons only, as many of these things have been studied and researched far more than the weapons have.
I do realise that many collectors collect weapons, buy weapon books and study then, and that is that. For the ones who wants to go farther, studying other art items can be of a very big help.