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Originally Posted by ariel
This is, perhaps, the strangest governmental regulation defining which swords are kosher and which are not:-)
BTW, do you know why these are called Pranguli?
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no, found the name here in the forum posts as being the one they use for the straight rather than the curved ones. i note amongst the scabbard decorations there are crosses like the georgian flag, red cross of st. george, like the english flag, but with maltese crosses added to the 4 white quarter panels. probably should call it a palash.
found this page which contains an interesting video:
http://www.gfmstudio.com/productions/lostcrusaders
read somewhere that the khevsurli culture stubbornly resisted change of any sort and continued making swords like this well it the late 1930's when stalin finally broke them.
the UK reg. evolved after a knee-jerk reaction to a politician being killed with one of those cheap SS 'samurai swords' so they got together and passed a law to protect themselves and banned samurai swords.
then a bunch of re-enactor and martial arts groups as well as collectors had a fit & we managed to convince them that there was a valid legitimate use for the antiques, and for new ones that were art pieces, ie. hand forged and expensive art pieces, and they compromised so any post 1950 machine made 'samurai' sword was banned.
then they had to define 'samurai sword' so they changed it to any curved sword over 50cm. ( i recall a media article about someone was arrested in possession in public of a six inch (5.25cm.)samurai sword
).
then the martial artists got them to exempt traditionally hand made swords from japan, which being very expensive would not likely be used illegally. then the quietly dropped the japan bit after they were informed that they were being racist as other cultures made traditional swords by hand forging, including a number of UK blacksmiths.
for some reason straight swords never came into the equation, so were thus permitted. unlike germany, where anything not permitted by law is verboten, UK works on the opposite, if anything is not forbidden by law it is allowed.
they also allow martial arts practitioners who are members of an approved and insured martial arts club, or re-enactment group members that belong to an insured group can import curved swords.
it's what happens when you allow politicians to actually try to think for you.