The Army of the Indian Moghuls: Its Organization and Administration c10.s5.2

c10.s5.2

Kaṭār, kaṭārah, kaṭārī. This is a Hindī word, kaṭṭār (Shak., 1556), probably from the same root as the verb kāṭnā, to cut. The translator of the Seir (i, 549, note 53) thus describes it, “A poignard peculiar to India made with a hilt, whose two branches extend along the arm, so as to shelter the hand and part of the arm. The blade is very thick with two cutting edges, having a breadth of three inches at the hilt and a solid point of about one inch in breadth. The blade cannot be bent and is so stiff that nothing will stop it but a cuirass. The total length is 2 to 2½ feet, one half of this being the blade.” The hilt has at right angles to the blade a cross-bar by which the weapon is grasped, and it is thus only available for a forward thrust. It is named in the Āīn, i, 112, being N°. 10, and it is fig. 9 on plate xii. There the blade is slightly curved; Mustapha’s description corresponds perhaps more nearly to fig. 4 of the same plate, the *jamdhar*. There are about twenty five specimens entered in Egerton (pp. 102, 109, 116, 131) and five of these are shown on plates ix, x (two) and xiii (two). The blades are of various patterns, and the length varies from 9 to 17½ inches. One N°. 340 is forked or two-bladed. Yule, “Glossary” 815, refers to two from Travancore which had blades of 20 and 26 inches. Others of great length are described by Mr. Walhouse in the “Indian Antiquary,” vii, 193. The *Bānk* is called in Egerton, N°. 335, p. 102, the B. *katārī*, but the figure on plate ix shows it as being like a knife and without the handle characteristic of the *katār*. Stavorinus, quoted by Yule, “Glossary,” 816, speaks of a dagger, the name of which he translates as belly piercer. No one seems to know what Indian word was intended unless it were the *kaṭṭār*, which may be translated the “cutter” (quasi, “piercer”).