Ian, thank you!
As I have mentioned earlier, the text was attempted to be read by a native ( my postdoctoral fellow from Pakistan, who is fluent in Urdu and Pashto and his wife, who is a native Pashto) neither of them managed to get any useful clues. When these labels were examined in the Dept. Of Restoration, they were viewed under mighty magnification , and in different lights. This was also unproductive and the Curator of the Islamic Manuscript collection couldn't make any heads or tales either.
In short, this is a dead end. Drats! :-)
Ward,
Mahratt based his entire hypothesis on the fact that, having scoured the Internet, he was unable to find any photographs or drawings of Afghani natives carrying chooras. One could counter it by noting that very few British photographers, artists or journalists dared to venture to Waziristan and its "suburbs" in the 19 century:-) but I do trust Mahratt that his search was fruitless. He is very good in searching the Net.
I know of no examples of very old Choora in British museums. I found catalogues of provincial amateur exhibitions of ~ 1870 introducing Waziri or just Afghani knives, but there were no pics. Their whereabouts are unknown to me. Perhaps, they are the very ones I am showing here:-)
Egerton shows a Choora in his book ( #624, Plate XIV) and gives Bannu as its origin: current Edwardsville, Pakhtunkhwa, The Pakistani part of the Khyber Pass) . Regretfully, Mahratt refuses to see a Choora in it :-)
Radiocarbon analysis is unlikely to be productive: the items are not old enough and the spread will undoubtedly push the date somewhere between 17 and 20 centuries. Even worse, assuming that the analysis establishes the age as 19 century, one would be able to invoke a not unreasonable counter argument that the churras were made in , say, 1940, but the master used bits and pieces of wood, leather and horn that he inherited from his great-great-grandfather and that were stored in the darkest corner of his workshop:-)
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