DESCRIPTION
Vintage Old Damascus Steel Rajput Heavy Katar Multiple Slender Bars Handle
A heavy Indian Katar with substantial armor piercing blade. The blade has an acute point and a thick bulge near the tip where it reaches a thickness of almost twice the forte.
Blade has deep grooves, more like sunken panels, with high ridges separating them. Such grooves are often erroneously called "blood grooves" but are usually purely meant to lighten a blade while keeping it rigid. Sometimes the grooves and sunken panels are so shallow that they are almost purely ornamental.
The grooves on this katar, however are deep enough to lighten the structure while maintaining rigidity and even to act as actual channels to drain blood out of a wound so the weapon doesn't function as a "stop" if not extracted. It's a guess, but perhaps these heavy armor piercers are made this way because they are more likely to get stuck in a steel plate.
The handle consists of three bars, their ends protruding from the sides of the two long, thick steel sidebars with remains of old silver damascening. It is a very simple but well-executed piece, relying purely on its geometry and not on decoration for its aesthetic appeal.
CONCLUSION An impressive katar with narrow but thick armor piercing blade with deeply sunken panels. Completely undecorated, its aesthetic appeal lies in its simplistic but well-executed geometry. It is part of a group of such weapons with a very distinct style that may be attributed to the region of Ulwar and Bundelkhand, central north India.
Notes
1. Nordlunde, Jens: A Passion for Indian Arms; a Private Collection. 2016, Denmark. Self-published.
2. Indian art in Marlborough House. A catalogue of the Collection of Indian Arms and Objects of Art presented by the Princes and Nobles of India. Illustrated and printed by W. Griggs. Photo and Chromo-Lithographer to Her Majesty the Queen. Reprint. Ken Trotman, 2008.
3. Arms and armour at Sandringham. The Indian Collection presented by the Princes, Chiefs and Nobles of India in 1875-1786; also weapons and war relics from other cultures. London: W. Griggs & Sons, Ltd, Hanover Street, Peckham, 1910. Catalog numbers 20 and 21.
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