This weapon belonged to James Grant Duff (1789- 1858), an officer of the East India Company who was appointed Resident (political agent) of the Satara State in 1818. The weapon is accompanied by a fitted case, made after Grant Duff returned to Scotland, that is inscribed: "The 'Wagnuck' of Sivajee With Which He Killed the Moghul General. This Relic was given to Mr. James Grant-Duff of Eden When he was Resident at Satara By the Prime Minister of the Peshwa of the Marathas". This refers to a famous moment during the complicated political upheavals of 17th-century India. During a protracted military engagement in 1659, the Maratha leader Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj (r.1664-1680) and Afzal Khan (?-1659), the commander of the opposing Bijapur army, arranged a truce and met in a tented enclosure. Both came armed: Shivaji wore mail under his clothes and metal skull protection under his turban. He also held a metal ‘tiger claws’ weapon concealed in his hand. The two men fought, and Shivaji disembowelled his opponent. It is not possible to verify whether these tiger claws are the ones used by the celebrated Maratha ruler nearly 160 years before the weapon was gifted to Grant Duff, particularly as other claws with such a provenance were recorded in the royal collections at Satara long after the Resident’s return to Britain. The circumstances of the gift also remain unclear. The last Peshwa of the Marathas, Bahi Rao II (1775-1851), surrendered to the British in June 1818 after the defeat in the Third Anglo-Maratha War and was banished to Bithoor near Kanpur. It is possible one of Peshwa's officials presented the weapon, or that Grant Duff was gifted the tiger claws by Raja Pratap Singh or another member of the Satara court.