A Fine Silver Mounted Dha Shay

  • A Fine Silver Mounted Dah Shay

  • A Fine Silver Mounted Dah Shay

  • A Fine Silver Mounted Dah Shay

  • A Fine Silver Mounted Dah Shay

  • A Fine Silver Mounted Dah Shay

  • A Fine Silver Mounted Dah Shay

  • A Fine Silver Mounted Dah Shay

  • A Fine Silver Mounted Dah Shay

  • Sizang Chiefs

A Fine Silver Mounted Dha Shay
Chin- Lushai / Shan / Kachin
Chin Hills Region, Upper Burma, British Raj (Chin State - Sagaing, Myanmar)
Late 19th century - Early 20th century (ca. 1895 - 1920)
Steel, wood, silver, cotton
Blade: 58,4cm
Hilt & Blade: 78,1cm
Hilt, Blade, Sheath: 80cm
Collection Date: 2021
Collection Number: 158

Ex. Rick Stroud: Raleigh, North Carolina, USA (2021)
Ex. Chiswick Auctions: London, UK (2020)
Ex. UK Family Collection ((1895 - 1920)) - 2020)

A finely mounted dha shay sword from the historic Upper Burma, likely from the Chin People of the Chin Hills Region of Western Burma. The silver mounts are reminiscent of Shan silversmiths, and the squared tip style can be found in Assam and northward into Kachin and Yunnan province. The red laquer and styling best suggests Chin origin.

The heavy steel blade is slightly curved, single- edged with a thick spine ending in a concave squared tip. It has a dark zone on the cutting edge, indicating that it was heat treated. Red laquered wood hilt with a silver mounted beaded ferrule and gadrooned silver pommel of a lotus bud. The sheath is wood lacquer with beaded silver mounts and remnants of a baldric blue belt cord tied to tan wrappings. The quality of this sword symbolizes that the owner was one of a high societal status, possibly why the red laquer was applied as well. A fine and nicely balanced sword of the type.

Chiswick Provenance: "Purchased by the vendor's grandfather whilst he was working and living in the British Raj (between 1895 - 1920), brought to the UK at the end of his service in the 1920s-1930s and then passed on by descent to the present vendor".

Photograph 9: Siyun Chiefs of the Chin, British Burma, 1900. Gazatteer of Upper Burma and the Shan States, Part 1, Vol. 1.