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Old 29th July 2006, 05:10 AM   #3
dennee
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Join Date: Dec 2004
Location: College Park, MD
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It's a nice dao. It’s not necessarily Naga. There’s a tendency to lump together as ‘Naga’ many of the weapons of the hills of India’s northeast. That form of dao appears to originate with the Kachin/Jingpho and the Khamti but is found among the Lisu, Eastern (northeastern) Naga, and others. In general, the Naga had limited access to iron/steel and often purchased it from outsiders, including the people of the Assam plains, English tea planters (famously using old hoe blades), but for metalworking and the creation and trade of dao blades, eastern tribes like the Kalyo-Kengyu and Konyak seem to have been foremost. But most Nagas carried rather differently shaped daos; this type seems to be fairly rare in photos at least. On average, Naga dao blades look cruder than the typical Kachin dao as well. It seems that much technological innovation among the Nagas came from the east, including crossbows.

Kachin/Khamti-type daos have flared pommels. It seems that on many Kachin and Khamti daos, at least, the pommel cap is of ivory, with Khamti examples often having squared-off ends of the ‘flare’ (similar to the hilts of some Adi and Mishmi long knives). Other examples often have plainer, more rounded hilts/pommels of all wood. This could indicate that it belonged to a different people or was made for harder or more utilitarian function or represents some simplification over time or even wartime scarcity of materials (I too have one that I am convinced is a simple WWII bring-back, likely from Burma). One type of Kachin-type dao blade is pattern-welded in the manner of many Tibetan sword blades.

Written sources and photos would suggest that they could be found in the general area where these people above meet, perhaps in northernmost Burma, around the Dhemaji, Dibrugarh, Tinsukia and Sibsagar districts of Assam, the adjacent portion of Nagaland, the Tirap (Dirap) District of Arunachal Pradesh, and perhaps as far south and west as northern Cachar.

Three varieties pictured below: one with ivory pommel cap and brass ferrule (grip wrap missing), probably late nineteenth century; one with lacquered wood grip with lozenge-section pommel, early/mid twentieth century; one long (28-1/4”/72 cm) example with fiber-wrapped hilt and “hairpin” laminated blade.
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