MAHARAJA: The Splendor of India's Royal Courts

Sword
Former kingdom of Indore, about 1800
Steel, gold, diamonds, emeralds, rubies
© V&A Images/Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

This sword, richly encrusted with gemstones and engraved with the symbol of the royal umbrella, probably belonged to the maharaja of the Maratha kingdom of Indore. One of the most important kingdoms of the Maratha confederacy, Indore long resisted British supremacy. Eventually, at the end of the third and last Anglo-Maratha war in 1817, British forces defeated Indore's young ruler and captured the state treasury.