Ethnographic Arms & Armour - View Single Post - Inscription identification of two Indian chainmail-plate armour (Zirah Baktar)

Nihl · 21st February 2023, 03:08 PM

Hi Richard. So, I can provide some help in discerning the scripts of your inscriptions, but I'm afraid I can only fully translate one of the three.

Going top-to-bottom, the first inscription you show is written in an arabic-based script. Something like Farsi, Urdu, Mughal Persian, or some variety thereof. As I am not literate in this script, I can not provide any translation, but hopefully someone on here or swordforum will be able to provide you more information.

The second inscription is a classic Bikaner armory mark. It reads "Bi 4", which doesn't provide much information other than that it was the fourth item (or perhaps piece of armor more specifically) to be catalogued in a given period. Given that most items in the Bikaner armory have multiple inventory markings on them, the fact that yours only has one suggests that it was only in the armory for a short period of time.

The third inscription is written in a Devanagari-based script, however due to the fact that such scripts varied quite a bit regionally until they were standardized in the modern day, I can't tell much of what it is saying, or what language/dialect it represents. However I can read the last two characters, one of which is simply the letter "dh" (ध), while the other is "Ji" (जी), an honorific similar to "sir". Given that ji is usually included at the end of names, it's safe to assume that this inscription gives the name of someone who owned this armor, however again given that I cannot read the rest of the inscription I can't tell you who exactly this person was (other than that their name ended in dh). There are no numbers present anywhere in this inscription, so it likely is just a person's name, perhaps accompanied by some type of devotional saying or the place/circumstance in which this armor was acquired.

21st February 2023, 03:08 PM	#2
Nihl Member Join Date: Feb 2018 Posts: 87	Hi Richard. So, I can provide some help in discerning the scripts of your inscriptions, but I'm afraid I can only fully translate one of the three. Going top-to-bottom, the first inscription you show is written in an arabic-based script. Something like Farsi, Urdu, Mughal Persian, or some variety thereof. As I am not literate in this script, I can not provide any translation, but hopefully someone on here or swordforum will be able to provide you more information. The second inscription is a classic Bikaner armory mark. It reads "Bi 4", which doesn't provide much information other than that it was the fourth item (or perhaps piece of armor more specifically) to be catalogued in a given period. Given that most items in the Bikaner armory have multiple inventory markings on them, the fact that yours only has one suggests that it was only in the armory for a short period of time. The third inscription is written in a Devanagari-based script, however due to the fact that such scripts varied quite a bit regionally until they were standardized in the modern day, I can't tell much of what it is saying, or what language/dialect it represents. However I can read the last two characters, one of which is simply the letter "dh" (ध), while the other is "Ji" (जी), an honorific similar to "sir". Given that ji is usually included at the end of names, it's safe to assume that this inscription gives the name of someone who owned this armor, however again given that I cannot read the rest of the inscription I can't tell you who exactly this person was (other than that their name ended in dh). There are no numbers present anywhere in this inscription, so it likely is just a person's name, perhaps accompanied by some type of devotional saying or the place/circumstance in which this armor was acquired.