The Army of the Indian Moghuls: Its Organization and Administration c11.s3.3

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".