A Mughal matchlock hunting gun, North India, circa 18th century

the welded steel barrel with distinctive "orange" pattern watering damascened in gold along the sighting line with a cypress tree and floral cartouches, the tiger-headed muzzle inlaid in gold with red paste eyes, the lock cover with elegant fluted ivory plaques, the wooden stock painted all-over with floral and animal cartouches showing the creatures of the hunt including hares, tigers, leopards, lions and dogs on a ground of gold foliate scrolls, the barrel secured to the understock by silver wire, the butt end finished with an ivory plaque

The matchlock gun, developed in Europe in the fifteenth century, had reached India by the sixteenth century.  The earliest examples depicted in Indian miniatures are from at least the 1540s.  A portrait of Shah Jahan by the artist Payag, dating to circa 1630-35, and now in the Chester Beatty Library in Dublin (library no. 7B.28), shows the Mughal Emperor holding a very similar hunting gun with painted stock and distinctive ivory lock cover (see Leach 1995, no.3.32, colour plate 65, p.416; and, Elgood 1995, p.140).  For a discussion of the technical aspects of the orange pattern watering, see Figiel 1991, pp.114-116.