petermorwood:armthearmour:Wavy bladed, jade hilted Khanjarli with silver inlaid floral patterns, Ind
petermorwood:armthearmour:Wavy bladed, jade hilted Khanjarli with silver inlaid floral patterns, India, ca. 19th century, housed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. This was made with considerable skill because the blade wasn’t ground to shape from a plain original, it was forged to shape as shown by the wavy centre-line. The grooves outlining the edges were probably chiselled in afterwards, before final tempering.I like the silver inlay on green; YMMV, but IMO it’s more elegant and understated than something like this:Of course this next one’s hilt is even more understated, with no precious-metalwork at all. That’s reserved for the koftgari panels on the blade.Incidentally the OP dagger is a khanjar, not a khanjarli. It’s an easy slip to make, what with katar and khanda and kanjali and kard and kindjal and… You get the picture. :-> Anyway, khanjarli usually have recurved blades, though khanjars can have them too, like this one from the Met……but the khanjarli hilt has a distinctive shape; it may have a knuckleguard or not, or be made of ivory or wood, but it always has that large crescent pommel so can’t be confused with a khanjar.Confusing it with a chilanum, however, is another matter. Sometimes it’s easy to tell the difference……but at other times it looks like someone’s trying to be confusing on purpose. The ring in the middle of the grip is usually a chilanum giveaway, but as the one on the left of these three shows, sometimes it’s not there.As I’ve said before, when trying to think up interesting fantasy weapons for art, fiction or games, India is a great source of inspiration. -- source link