The Army of the Indian Moghuls: Its Organization and Administration c10.s5.10

c10.s5.10

All four of these weapons seem of the same class as the Khanjar, though varying slightly in form. The same may be said of the Bichhwā and the Khapwah. Bichhwā, literally "scorpion", had a wavy blade. It is mentioned by Egerton, 27, and there are specimens in the India Museum, Nos 490—8 (p. 116), 628 (p. 131), and plate x (opp. p. 114). The *Khapwah*, N°. 6 in the *Āīn*, i, 110, must have been some sort of dagger; there is no figure of it on plate xii, but Egerton’s plate i, N°. 28, shows it as almost identical with the *jambwah*. May it not mean “the finisher, the giver of the *coup de grâce*,” from the H. verb *khapnā*, to fill up, to complete, as in the phrase, *den khap-gyā* “the debt has been liquidated?” The Persian word is *dashnah* (Steingass, 527). In some manuscripts of the *Akbarnāmah* (near the end of the 17th year), it is said, as Mr. H. Beveridge has pointed out to me, that Akbar when drunk ran after Shāhbāz Khān of Mālwah, and tried to strike him “with a *dashnah*, called in Hindī a *khapwah*”, because he refused to sing.