The earliest known illustration of an Afghan Pulwar

[Turkoman.khan]

Originally Posted by Jim McDougall

While Egerton (1885) includes the paluoar in one of the color plates of illustration with a grouping of tulwars, he does not specify it as other than a variant of the tulwar. The actual term 'paluoar' seems to derive from Rockstuhl and Col. Yule's glossary and to have a Persian root (which seems plausibly correct) and Rawson (1967, p.86) suggests that the Indian term 'tulwar' was derived from the term 'paluoar'.

Hello Jim. In the book "Edged Weapons of Afghanistan 19 - early 20th century", I read that for the first time the term "paluoar" is mentioned in the book of a Russian researcher in 1860. Col. Yule's glossary written before? At what year?

[Jim McDougall]

Originally Posted by Turkoman.khan

Hello Jim. In the book "Edged Weapons of Afghanistan 19 - early 20th century", I read that for the first time the term "paluoar" is mentioned in the book of a Russian researcher in 1860. Col. Yule's glossary written before? At what year?

I'm not certain of the year of the Yule reference, but Egerton was compiling data for his book in the 1870s and of course the Russian reference you mention might have been seen by him or for that matter Yule, which I think post dated 1860. Naturally Russian resources have not regularly been well known to writers confined to the English language unless filtered through French or other sources.

Whatever the case, I am under the impression that Persian influence was certainly at hand in the paluoar with the downward quillon guard and the stylized dragon terminals etc. bringing to mind Safavid character. BTW, good reference to Dmitry's brilliant book, which I do not have on hand at the moment, but certainly wish I did!

[Turkoman.khan]

Originally Posted by Jim McDougall

I'm not certain of the year of the Yule reference, but Egerton was compiling data for his book in the 1870s and of course the Russian reference you mention might have been seen by him or for that matter Yule, which I think post dated 1860. Naturally Russian resources have not regularly been well known to writers confined to the English language unless filtered through French or other sources.

Egerton not only knew the Russian edition, which is mentioned in the book I wrote about. He used fragments of illustrations from the Russian edition as a color insert for his book, published in 1880. He himself writes that the swords are from Zarskoye Selo (this is how I found out the vicinity of St. Petersburg, Russia)

https://archive.org/details/indian-a...b?view=theater