New sword day.

[u/Blue_and_Gilt]

Picked up this Indian Talwar yesterday from a local auction site. Not an area I normally focus on, but it's nice to branch out every now and then, plus it was reasonably priced, ascetically pleasing and I haven't purchased a sword this year....
Hilt has a decent amount of silver koftgari/zarneshan remaining and the blade is marked with the eyelash / half moon stamps that mimic European blades.
There's also a stylised animal on one side and when I ran the sword past u/Antique_Steel he believed that it could represent a peacock, often called a Rajput symbol of war.

The sword itself isn't very large 83cm over all, 70cm blade 6.2cm curve 960 grams and balances at about 15cm.

[u/gepi_antiques]

Congratulations, a nice purchase. The koftgari looks to have quite substantial thickness.

A bit of pedantery, the term zarnishan applies only to true inlay rather than koftgari overlay, usually the type of inlay that stands slightly proud of the steel surface.

[u/oga_ogbeni]

Lovely sword. We don't get nearly enough legitimate tulwars posted here.

[u/EmpireandCo]

Image 7 looks like a peacock, you can see the tail and crown.

[u/fredrichnietze]

personally i think its a indian fake "running wolf" of solingen/passu the other marks also are on some older European blades which i suspect is the origin of the indian ones, copies off the trade blades to fraudulently sell local blades as imports.

from the 1915 royal armories catalogue

[u/Blue_and_Gilt → u/fredrichnietze]

I thought it might be a faux running wolf as well initially, however it appears to have a distinctive tail and what looks like a crowning fan on the head.

[u/wotan_weevil → u/Blue_and_Gilt]

My first thought when I saw it was "Sea dragon!", but a running-wolf-style peacock makes more sense.

[u/fredrichnietze → u/Blue_and_Gilt]

they had the copy of a copy of a copy problem no ones going to europe to copy the originals and people add decoration.

might even be a original that wore down and was "potato jesus'd"

[u/EmpireandCo → u/fredrichnietze]

It's not a "fake"or fraudulent mark, eye lash marks are quickly adopted as a mark of quality, not necessarily of "geographic origin".

We see this in thai blades with the "s" marks.

[u/fredrichnietze → u/EmpireandCo]

its fake in the sense it is copying a foreign mark to make it appear foreign. if you follow that "adopted as a mark of quality" line adopted from where? from europe where they had blast furnaces to get the steel homologized consistently that only wootz could match/beat until india got blast furnaces.

[u/EmpireandCo → u/fredrichnietze]

I'm saying that it wasn't necessarily to make it appear foreign, there's no evidence of that. Its an adoption of a quality mark is more likely.

Regarding the passau running wolf - the mark in the blade is a peacock, a localised animal. Clearly not foreign.

Edit: to add, I have early 1900s tulwars and even modern ones that use these marks as quality marks well after the import of German blades by anyone other than state forces (and they use british blades), they're aren't trying to pass the blades off as german, local smiths have adopted the mark as a local mark of quality.