Knife: O.160-1879

Maker(s)

Maker: Unknown

Entities

• Knife
• Scabbard
• Indian weapons
• Knife: pichangatti

Categories

• Weapons

Description

The steel blade is single-edged, flat at the back with a dip towards the point and widening slightly to the point. It is decorated at the back with a series of punched crescents and an incised line. It has a short ricasso and a small, facetted block decorated at the back with Xs in double incised lines, and inlaid silver stripes on the broad tang, visible above and below the grip for half its length. The hilt has a pistol grip of silver alloy, attached with three silver rivets along the grip and another, with large ornate washers, at the pommel. The tang button has a similar but smaller washer. The scabbard is of wood, with silver alloy throat and chape, and copper alloy bands down front and rear joints and round the middle. At the end is an onion-shaped finial filed into lobes. There are applied bands punched with rows of fine dots, at the top of the chape and three on the throat. At the top front of the throat is a silver hook, and at the outside centre is a polyhedral knop with a short section of heavy twisted silver chain, joined by a silver bell with pendant corals on silver chains, to two longer sections of finer chain with a half moon at the end with a set of five implements (tweezers, a spike, an iron file and two spatulate ear-wax removers). The blade is deeply pitted at the point, the copper alloy bands on the scabbard oxidising

Legal notes

Given by Robert Taylor, MA

Acquisition and important dates

Method of acquisition: Given (1879) by Taylor, Robert, MA

Dating

19th Century
Circa 1800 CE - 1879 CE

Note

Compare Royal Armouries XXVID.46 and even closer, XXVID.???, as well as O.202-1879 from this collection, which could be from the same workshop.

This is the typical knife of the Coorg people of the south-west coast of India. The name comes from Tamil and means ‘hand knife’. It was always carried in the front of the belt that carries a ayda katti and was more normally used as a pocket knife. The little group of tools are toiletry utensils - tweezers, a spike, file, and two ear wax removers.