Pickaxes of the Thuggee

[Jim McDougall]

In keeping with the weaponry subject matter which would have aligned with these items of the 1939 film "Gunga Din", this Afghan gun, the jezail, would have been 'of the type' being used by the tribesmen firing down on the British troops from their positions in the high ground of the 'Pass'.

As typical, this example has the old EIC lock, circulated for many generations usually, in much more modern mounts in traditional manner.

The deadly Afridi snipers are described in another of Kipling's famed poems "Frontier Arithmetic";
"...a scrimmage in a border station, a canter down some dark defile;
Two thousand pounds of education, drops to a ten-rupee jezail".

Gunga Din deliberately drew the guns away from his soldiers, and took their fire himself, saving the soldiers he so admired by giving his own life.
In the last words of Kipling's 1890 poem, "Gunga Din",
"...By the livin' Gawd that made you, you're a better man than I, Gunga Din".

A true soldier he was.