The Army of the Indian Moghuls: Its Organization and Administration c11.s3: III. Pistols
The Army of the Indian Moghuls: Its Organization and Administration c11.s3
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III. Pistols
c11.s3.1
This weapon was the *tamanchah* or *tamānchah* (Steingass, 819, a sharp blow, a pistol). It does not appear in the list in the *Āīn*, an omission not to be wondered at when we remember that the *Āīn* was composed in 1596—7, while the pistol does not seem to have been known even in Europe much before 1544 (H. Wilkinson, Engines of War, 58). The pistol was in use in India, to some extent at any rate, early in the 18th century. For instance, it was with a shot from a pistol that in October 1720 a young Sayyad, related to Husain ‘Alī Khān, killed that nobleman’s assassin (Mhd Qāsim, Lāhorī, *Ibratnāmah*).
c11.s3.2
Dowson (Ell., vii, 573) must here have read *nīmchah* and translates a "short sword", but all the copies of the text that I have seen read *tamanchah*, i. e. a pistol. Probably the pistol was confined to the higher ranks of the nobles. Its rarity is shown by these being so few examples in the Indian Museum. Egerton's "Handbook" has only three entries, and one of these refers to a pair of English pattern, which must be quite modern. But Ashob, fol. 61a, writing in 1196 H. about the shoe-sellers' riot at the great mosque in Dihlī in the year 1141 H. (11th March 1729), speaks of the soldiers taking part in it as having European *pistōl* and *tabānchah*.
c11.s3.3
*Sherbachah*. This musketoon or blunderbuss (literally "tiger-cub") seems to have been of a still later introduction than the pistol. Egerton catalogues three examples only N°. 410 (p. 110), Nos 761—2 (p. 144). One is twenty inches long. Probably the weapon came into India with Nādir Shāh's army (1738) or that of Aḥmad Shāh, Abdālī, (1748—1761). In the last quarter of the 18th century there was a regiment of Persian horse in the Lakhnau service known as the *Sher-bachah*. Possibly they took their name from this weapon, with which they may have been armed. Or the name may have been due to their supposed ferocity and thirst for their enemies' blood. Dowson in *Elliot*, viii, 398, note 2, quoting from the *Akhbār-ul-Muḥabbat*, speaks of ten thousand dismounted men in Aḥmad Shāh, Abdālī's army in 1760 "having *sher-bachas* (pistols) of Kābul".