#talwar

This is beautiful. On the note about maces and the like, they're traditionally horseback weaponry. I'm unsure of the usefulness or practicality of a dagger tucked away in a weapon primarily used from 'higher ground' or where CQC wouldn't be common. I mean, fall off the horse, drop the mace and draw the saber or katar. Although, redundancy is what keeps humans alive. It does strike me as odd that they wouldn't have shoved an extra weapon in just for the niche.

That notion of dropping the mace then drawing something else with longer (or for really close quarters, shorter) reach is something which may well have happened, though not just because it was an exclusively cavalry weapon. All the other weapons were also used from horseback, and in one instance its original Indo-Persian name is pretty specific about equestrian origins.

The zaghnal, that wicked pick-axe thing...

(yup, there's a dagger...)

...has a European equivalent called a "horseman's pick" and supposedly copied from Ottoman weapons which would have been zaghnal-shaped; this one is Polish or Hungarian...

The hatchet-knife bhuj was - per Wikipedia, Bygone Blades and Oriental Arms - a popular weapon with the Gujarati and Sindhi cavalry, who also wore a distinctive style of full armour...

(yup, there's a dagger)

(This time there's a gun, and probably a dagger too because why not?)

Most conclusively, the proper name for Indo-Persian battleaxes is tabar / tabarzin, which means "saddle-axe".

These included some of the few real-life examples of double-headed battleaxes (with daggers, but of course...)

Though popular in fantasy art, IRL usual practice was to have an axe on one side and something different like a hammer or pick on the other side in case the axe wasn't effective enough against whatever kind of armour the opponent was wearing.

And of course even single-headed axes often had the usual dagger tucked away.

Here's yet another with a sword-hilt (also possibly a dagger) and a built-in matchlock gun...

And here's one where some warrior just couldn't make up his mind.

Here's a mace with a similar (khanda broadsword) hilt:

I took a close look at various mace-pics I've posted (here and here), something I should have done before, then searched further on-line, and I'm starting to think they had no daggers because mostly their hafts were solid rather than hollow...

Thanks go to @irlactualwizard for prompting me to track down an answer to my own question - though I'll be waiting for someone who knows far more about Indian weapons to correct me. :-P

Finally, here's a display case showing three more maces, a couple of the double- (here triple-) -bladed daggers called haladie, and a few examples of what Indian weaponsmiths could do with the basic concept of a sword blade...

...including making use of a European hilt, top row second left. Its blade may have been mounted on an Indian khanda or talwar hilt, which happened often enough to create a whole class of "firangi" (Frankish) swords.

There are many more pics on my blog and elsewhere. Once again, for fantasy edged-weapon inspirations, India is a great place to start...

Indian Tulwar, 19th Century

Possibly from Sindh, with silver koftgari decorated hilt. Blade length: 29 3/4” Grip length: 3 1/2” Overall length (blade point to pommel finial): 34 1/2” Point of balance: ~7 1/2”

Sufi Master Younus AlGohar reveals the secret behind Maula Ali’s sword (Zulfikar). https://youtu.be/X4S2Soej2i8

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Mughal period Turkish kilij blade and Indian style hilt with trade mark on blade

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