The use of European RAPIER blades in Maratha Pata and Khanda swords

[Jim McDougall]

FURTHER NOTES:
Re: possible use of the European rapier blade in Indian pata and khanda, the gauntlet sword and 'Hindu basket hilt'.

In Rawson (1969, p.23),
"...Indian swordsmanship seems never to have made use of the point or much use of guarding with the sword. We have it on the authority of the traveler Tavernier that his own European method of point-fence was completely unfamiliar to his Indian hosts. The only evidence for the use of the point in Indian hand arms occurs in the specialized katars equipped with a heavy 'maille perce' tip. Indian sword blades were thus not made primarily to parry wigh. Parrying was the function of the small circular shield in use since the 10th c.
Blades were intended primarily to cut, and only the Maratha swords influenced by European examples, which were given reinforced edges and basket hilts, seem ever to have been conceived as parrying weapons. "

on p.47 re, the Marathas":
"..they seem to be content with the forms of the European blades as they received them, and the actual forms of the mountings have no more than immediately practical invention expended on them".

also, "...there is no indication that the Marathas entertained an aesthetic of the sword, though no doubt they rated good workmanship highly, and must have been skilled swordsmen. Their fondness for the adaptable BROADSWORD indicates they were swordsmen of a character that did not allow any preconceptions of a science of swordsmanship to interfere with expediency".

Throughout the 18th into the 19th c. many kinds of sword besides standard forms were used by the Marathas, noted as a 'motley' crowd, and used pretty much any blades and weapons available.

MY CONCLUSION:
While there was a wide array of European sword blades entering the Maratha sphere, these were primarily arming types of blades, typically double edged, but some were backswords. Although some of these were narrow blades, the term 'rapier' blade was often misleadingly used, as they were 'heavy' rapier blades as used on swords such a pappenheimers, schiavona and other military type arming swords.

These were coming into Indian trade through the Marathas, and most probably many Armenian merchants, and came mostly from Solingen, possibly Genoa and other entrepots. As there were often intrigues interrupting shipments of blades from Germany into England, it is possible that the notion of English blades might have become construed through such routing. However the comment by Admiral Angre surely could not have referred to these German blades s they were high quality.

Therefore I would submit that the narrow rapier type blades used in civilian fencing type swords were not used in swords such as the pata and khanda. They could however have been used in the 'gupti' sword cane/stick.

[Ibrahiim al Balooshi]

Thank You Jim~ That was a brilliant rendition and a great learning curve for all concerned.
Ibrahiim al Balooshi

[fernando]

Originally Posted by Jim McDougall

... Therefore I would submit that the narrow rapier type blades used in civilian fencing type swords were not used in swords such as the pata and khanda...

A toast to your candid statement, Jim,
Let's make it an illustrated one ... with images borrowed from my own little collection and Eduardo Nobre's, featuring swords that may be called rapiers, some of them "off mark" (illegally lengthy) and some patas i saved to my disk a while back from this very forum. Different blade typology is visible... at least in these shown


.

[ariel]

The issue is significantly confused by the fact that we do not know exactly to what kind of sword ( blade) a particular author is referring.

Was he having in mind a late Renaissance cut-and-thrust sword?
Or, the 17-18 century purely thrusting smallsword that continued to be called rapier by some despite the obvious dating and functional difference?

While the former could easily be used as a part of Indian Pata or Firangi, or even Khanda, the latter was totally unsuitable for that purpose.

Let’s not overestimate military/fencing sophistication of older linguists and even arms historians . After all, even now we can see definition of long and thin bronze Mycenaean swords as “rapiers”. Sure, they looked like swords that d’Artagnan wielded in countless Hollywood movies:-)

While the most popular origin of the word “rapier” is traced to the Spanish Espada Ropera ( dress sword), there were opinions that it stemmed from Greek ραπίζειν “ to strike”, or French /English raspiere/ rasper “scraper or poker”.

Language is a powerful tool to confuse us. Not for nothing Divine creation of multiple languages ended human project of building the Tower of Babel and why Americans and Brits are called two nations divided by a common language:-)

[fernando]

Amen to all that, Ariel.
I would add to the etymology quiz the suggestion by some dude called Scheler in that, the discussed term comes from the German rappen, raffen = snatch.
But, as in its genesis this sword style had about the same parameters in different nations, and their nationals adopted local idiomatic terms to name the thing, even possibly having given it a different use, evolution then followed its path according to each said nation's needs and imagination; civilian, military, cut thrust, whatever.
Not wanting to be tagged as a radical, i would not reject the perspective that traditionalists would decline the use of the rapier controversial term, despite the burden to spell out a couple describing words, to let know what they refer to.
In the end, the inexorable truth is that, before and after rapiers, swords remain swords.

.

[Jim McDougall]

First of all, thank you so much Ibrahiim and Fernando for the kind words.

Ariel, thank you for finally capturing exactly what this thread was all about in the beginning, and the dilemma I referred to, which was we could not know with certainty which type of blade was being noted by the authors. It was never about the 'name game' or the almost nonsensical 'firangi' conundrum.

The point was (no pun intended) that the point-fence style of swordsmanship was completely unknown to the Indians in the 17th c.(as well noted by Tavernier).

As mentioned earlier (and I appreciate the indulgence for the elaborate corpus of cited quotes in my text) Elgood mentioned that the khanda blade was made longer after the arrival of the Europeans. He states this was no doubt to counter the EXTREMELY long blades of the European 'rapiers'

This is of course in accord with the notably (and often 'illegally so', as in Spanish legal restrictions) long rapier blades you show Fernando.

As can be seen with the pata illustration, this wider broadsword blade, which is distinctly German in form, but curiously has the three central fullers and the moons (dukari) as placed on Saharan blades. This type blade with three fullers is identical to my pata, but mine has astral sun, moon etc. This shows clearly that numbers of German blades which had been likely destined for North African entrepots, seem to have diverted to the Indian ports in the west.

In Rawson (1969, #22) is a pata in the V&A museum, 18th c. with this type of 'arming' blade. As noted, these became colloquially associated with the late renaissance period thrusting rapiers, where similar hilts were later mounted with militarily feasible heavier blades. (attached image).

In Pant, the plate of khandas I included with five examples (added below)of line drawings, the one on the far left seems to have a thin rapier blade, but this seems an anomaly or perhaps artistic license?
Rawson notes (p.23) that blades were intended primarily to cut, and only the Maratha swords influenced by European examples, which were given reinforced edged and basket hilts, seem ever to have bee conceived as parrying weapons.

While this suggests that European swordsmanship appears to have had distinct influence on the hilt, with addition of finger guard to complete the basket effect....and the bolstered edges which suggest same to receive blows in parrying.....it still does not seem the thrust was used. Again, this would negate the probable use of the narrow rapier blades.

Thank you guys for the additional input, which helps better evaluate this question as posed.

[ariel]

Agree 100%.

And, taking a risk of being chided for not sticking to the topic, the same considerations equally apply to the Katar/jamadhar, Khanda and endless Indonesian controversies. Tribe, tradition and language dictate names.
This is why it is so important to flush out original names and try to correlate them with the people who used them.

Name is an equivalent of a DNA test.

[Jim McDougall]

Something I have always wanted to do, and Robert Elgood has already done this in a fashion in his glossaries, is to cross reference the various terms used for particular weapon forms. This would especially benefit ethnographic arms study in offering a 'thesaurus' type reference that would present terms in different contexts and languages. Often there are colloquial or vernacular terms for a type, and sometimes the terms are actually general, such as sa'if; khanda; talwar which are technically = sword, but not otherwise specified.

The name game is typically counterproductive as incomplete or unreferenced use causes confusion, and the method I often use of parenthesized alternate terms becomes clumsy. However, it still becomes the best method at hand in avoiding semantic misunderstandings for those not necessarily deeply engrained in a topic. While most of us here know and understand these variations, many readers do not, and this impairs the learning potential greatly.

[Nihl]

Hi all,

I think one thing this thread could benefit from is a visual gallery of sorts, like with the pictures that Fernando has already posted. This should help everyone get a better understanding of the swords that we are talking about, as no doubt everyone has a different image of with a specific sword looks like in their mind (I know I personally imagine a swept hilt when thinking of a rapier, but only nebulously imagine the blade as being long, pointy, and thin).

To that extent with a pata I personally have the image of a generic (flat/smooth) gauntlet hilt with a broad blade, as best represented by the first image I've attached below.

To somewhat diverge from my point, I feel like it is necessary to ask: has anyone seen a pata with a definite rapier (super thin & pointy) blade? I feel like the claim that "rapier blades were mounted on patas" can be debunked simply by a lack of physical, documented evidence of the practice. Though of course more swords have been produced in India than have been photographed, it is still valid (I think) to expect at least a couple of these "pata-rapiers" to be documented. More likely I think this is just a case of the previously discussed name-game, with the use of the term "rapier" meant more generically at the time, and only later misinterpreted by us forumites.

As a bit of an exercise, I'd invite everyone to post images of the closest thing to a rapier-bladed pata they can find - whoever finds one mounted with a smallsword blade wins! Of course then there will no doubt be the argument over how thin a blade can be to still be able to cut well in the "Indian style"

Either way, here's my pick (the second & third images) - a pata with a pretty decently thin tapering blade, allegedly native-made from the 17th century.