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Lot Essay
"This alarming but handsomely sculptural forged steel weapon was designed to thurst fore and aft". Stuart Cary Welch thus described this weapon when it was included in the seminal exhibition India! at the Metropolitan Museum (Stuart Cary Welch, India: Art and Culture 1300-1900, New York, 1985, p.305, no.204).
This rare steel weapon derives its unusual form from a parrying weapon carried by Hindu mendicants. They are known as madu or maru in secondary literature (Wilbraham Egerton, An Illustrated Handbook of Indian Arms, London, 1880, p.111). Such weapons were fashioned from two blackbuck horns and were often fitted with a small shield. A relatively austere example, formerly in the Codrington collection and sold in these Rooms, 9 April 1863, now in the Royal Armouries, Leeds, was made during or after AH 1171 / 1758-9 AD as it is fitted with silver coins of that date (XXVIM.10). A lavishly decorated parrying weapon was presented to the Prince of Wales during his tour of India in 1875-6 by Dajiraji Chandrasimhji, Thakur Sahib of Wadhwan, Gujarat, and is now in the Royal Collection, Windsor (RCIN 11416). The significant weight of the present parrying weapon precludes it from effective parrying, and it is likely that it served a status symbol instead.
This rare steel weapon derives its unusual form from a parrying weapon carried by Hindu mendicants. They are known as madu or maru in secondary literature (Wilbraham Egerton, An Illustrated Handbook of Indian Arms, London, 1880, p.111). Such weapons were fashioned from two blackbuck horns and were often fitted with a small shield. A relatively austere example, formerly in the Codrington collection and sold in these Rooms, 9 April 1863, now in the Royal Armouries, Leeds, was made during or after AH 1171 / 1758-9 AD as it is fitted with silver coins of that date (XXVIM.10). A lavishly decorated parrying weapon was presented to the Prince of Wales during his tour of India in 1875-6 by Dajiraji Chandrasimhji, Thakur Sahib of Wadhwan, Gujarat, and is now in the Royal Collection, Windsor (RCIN 11416). The significant weight of the present parrying weapon precludes it from effective parrying, and it is likely that it served a status symbol instead.