Hi, may i connect the complicometer ?
Although the usual procedure is to give questions an explanation based on indexized patterns, things aren't necessarily only "black or white"; i think we all agree with that.
Allright, this piece might have not belonged to an European, with a taste for Indian stuff, but it could have been the other way round; a local person with a sword setup of European style, a phenomenum often observed in antiquity, in the area of weaponry ... at least. This not forcingly an actual fact, but just in thesis.
By the same order of ideas, the weapon doesn't have to be perfectly functional, to be a weapon. I bet several specimens developed were not fully efective, at least according to the "catalogue". There must have been lots of atypical pieces, surely more on the civilian side. I guess many a civilian would not dream going to school to learn how to hit someone; he would just imagine that a piece was to strike in an unstudyed single blow, no manouvres involved. No fighting art envolved, just having something to do the job at once.
Looking at the "estoc" piece shown by Jens ... decidedly a thrusting weapon, yet with the type of hilt giving the idea of usual conceptual slashing pourpose.
Concerning the rapier fencing technique, the fact that, in real practice, it wasn't used the Hollywood way, it doesn't avoid the fact that a specific schooled training was needed to use it ... i mean efectively use it.
Am i wrong if i say that you can slash with less training than you can thrust ?
Aren't thrusting moves more subtle and subject to the proper moment ?
David, you got me lost with the Goa event. This place was taken in 1510, the rapier wasn't yet used ... or do i miss something?
Also probably the pata wasn't a sword of unique handling technique. We know it was used by elite cavalry, as well as by monks afoot. If we go by the catalogue, we can imagine the first using it for slashing the infants and the late using it for thrusting the horsemen. Probably the different types of blades gave them the respectve logic; or then again there would be hybrid situations.
Definitely long lengthy blades served to create a handicap to the opponent, in terms of reach. This acomodates the idea that such blades would be, or also be, for thrusting. I notice that Daehnhardt hardly puts a blade as being exclusively for cutting or thrusting; he prefers to talk percentages.
I must have said such amount of BS that i won't even sign this posting

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