Appearance of the Kukri in Classical South Indian Culture

[Emanuel]

Hi Chris,

Perhaps you should clarify what you are looking for and how you are defining khukri. The kink is present in some form or other...the mid-axis of the blade is angled forward. The treatment of the spine is irrelevant I think, some have a very strong angular "kink" while other have a very smooth and gentle wide-angled curve. The example in the frieze is of the latter variety. Many of the 16th century pieces have a very strongly angled spine. I'll scan the pages when I get home tonight or tomorrow.

Attached are some pictures from "El Armamento Iberico" Fernando Quesada Sanz. It shows examples of the Greek kopis and the Iberian falcata, very similar weapons, very khukri-like, but both developed differently. The kopis is suggested to have developed from the Egyptian and Sumerian kopesh/sappara, themselves developed from an axe, while the falcata is thought to derive from celtic knives.

Also check out Spiral's pictures from the Kathmando National Museum You can see that the old 18th century khukri are often large, sword-sized and have a very smooth spine, no "kink" as in British pattern and post-WWI khukri.

I look at khukri as a branch of a general stream of experimentation in blade design that may have started with Macedonian incursion, earlier, or later, both independent and related. It's very hard not to see the kopis as a direct ancestor, but the falcata shows the possibility of a parallel development, so we shouldn't rule out the same with the khukri/South Indian blades.

Food for thought...

Emanuel

[Emanuel]

Just to throw in another wrench in the question, here is a shot of a 5th century BC Greek cup showing a Greek soldier fighting a Persian. Notice the Persian, not the Greek is wielding a kopis-like sword. The cup, help in the Antikenmuseum Basel und Sammlung Ludwig museu (# BS 480) is dated to 480 BC, over a century earlier than Alexander. At the time the Persian Empire extended to the Indus River, so we may consider this form of sword having being known in India much earlier than Alexander's incursion.

Food for thought...
Emanuel

[Gonzalo G]

Originally Posted by Emanuel

Just to throw in another wrench in the question, here is a shot of a 5th century BC Greek cup showing a Greek soldier fighting a Persian. Notice the Persian, not the Greek is wielding a kopis-like sword. The cup, help in the Antikenmuseum Basel und Sammlung Ludwig museu (# BS 480) is dated to 480 BC, over a century earlier than Alexander. At the time the Persian Empire extended to the Indus River, so we may consider this form of sword having being known in India much earlier than Alexander's incursion.

Food for thought...
Emanuel

I agree with you consideration, Emanuel, but fo the sake of precision, the warior is not persian, but Saka, a people from Central Asia which was used by the persians as mercenaries. Neverthless, there are many representations of persian warriors, made before the time of Alexander, using a kopis-like weapon. I know this and other Greek ceramics vases from this time, with similar representations. I know, also, from which book this pics were taken. There are, also, archaelogical findings from Khotan, which show very antique knives with downcurved blades similar to the khukris. I am following the trial of this weapons, and it does not point to Greece. And the classical sources seem to mention this fact, as mentioned on Burton´s The Books of the Sword.

The flacata appears on the 5th Century BC, before Alexander, but I personally do not think those weapons, the falcata and the kopis, were derivated from the kopesh, which, by the way, some archaeologists consider it originally Cannanite, and not egiptian. The Lycians also used a downcurved sword, more like the kopesh, and they were not a semitic or african people, as neither were the Cannanites.

The problem in studying this weapons, is the fact that there is but few archaeological research on India and Central Asia, and few historians-archaeologists studying the weapons from this area, in comparison to what has been made in Europe. It was not Burton, or Lord Egerton, who said that the khukri was derivated from the Greek kopis, supposedly carried into which now is actual Pakistan by Alexnder´s troops, but an specialist in occidental swords, without giving any argument. Burton only stated the mutual resemblence of this weapons.

Regards

Gonzalo

[Gonzalo G]

My aim in making the precision about the ethnicity of those warriors on the above representations, has no other purpose than to point to a possible relation among the downcurved swords and the cultural complexes of Central Asia and India. Otherwise, the precision would be irrelevant, unnecessary or maybe even pedantic. It is interesting the fact that, although the Greeks are always represented brandishing a kopis without guards, the Saka sometimes are represented with a downcurved sword with a crossguard with straigh quillons. The Kopis and the falcata have a kind of substitute of a guard, formed with the widening of the blade and the hilt on the side of the edge, in the point of their convergence, but they don´t have independent crossguards added to the sword, at least, as far as I have seen.

Obviously, the morphologies of the Near East-North Africa "sickle" swords, is very different from the downcurved swords from the Iberic Peninsula and from those found on the Greek representations.

Interestingly enough, Fernando Quesada Sanz, the world´s highest authority on the falcata (and he is not only a well intended knowledged amateur, but an archaeologist and a historian using scientific methods), states the following points:

1.- The machaira-kopis was an exotic weapon in Greece (meaning, foreign to Greeks). This, based on several arguments grounded on antique texts and a wide study of the iconography of this weapon (which includes 54 antique representaions of the machaira-kopis), and also on the military uses of the sword among the Greeks.
2.- The procedence of the falcata seems to point to a italic weapon, specifically etruscan, since the etruscans also had their own version of the machaira-kopis, different from the Greek. Though, unfortunately, it seems nobody has noticed it, except for the archaeologists. I can add that the etruscans, as other peoples from Europe, including from the Iberic Peninsula, are NOT what is commonly known as European Indo-Aryans, though they were-are pefectly "white" caucasians. Other influences from the etruscans can be seen on the disc-shaped cuirasses and some kind of puñales (poignard, as the english does not have an equivalent name, and dagger would not be the proper word).
3.- Based on the work of M. Gustin on the antique European one edged swords, Quesada Sanz points the origin of the falcata in a type of sword from La Téne, latter evolved on Central Europe.


By the way, the illustration showed above represents not only the evolution of the falcata and the machaira-kopis, but the possible evolution of all one edge sabres in Europe, and is related to the conclussions of M. Gustin (Fernando Quesada Sanz, Arma y Símbolo: La Falcata Ibérica, Instituto de Cultura Juan Gil-Albert, Colección Divulgación, No. 12, Alicante, España, pág.194).

4.- Quesada Sanz denies the Persian and Cimmerian-Scythic (or from the Noth-Pontic Steppe) origin of the machaira-kopis, based in the lack of archaeological evidence, and also because the 60% of the representations of this weapon appear on the hands of "exotic" personnel, as Persians, Troyans, giants and amazons, and in 17 cases where Greek warriors appear brandishing this weapon, in 14 of them they are fighting against the same exotic foes, so the representations are more or less symbolic or mythical.

Although with all due respect I don´t agree with this last statement, it is interesting to see where all those references points to. After all, some advancements has been made to identify those amazons and the people who, migrating to the west, is associated with the detonation of La Téne Period. And the lack of archaeological evidence is not a proof that something has occured, or not occured, only that there is not scientific proof of it, for the moment. And the same apply to the statement that the downcurved swords from Asia have a Greek origin. The intersting point in all this, is the fact that nobody has said the opposite: that the use of the swords in general, and the downcurved swords in particular, could be originated in Asia, Central Eurasia and the Near East. And why not? After all, they had the older civilizations, an older and more advanced metallurgy, and Central Asia, using the words of Doctor David Nicolle, influenced with its most advanced military technology all Europe at least since the roman times (if not before). Just see the juggernout (an Indian word), represented by the "barbarian" Asian conquerors when they appear on the occident or the near East, crushing all the European armies, like the Huns, Mongols, Turks (all kind of türkic peoples) and Tatars did. Interestingly enough to study them with a more sober, un-biased and scientific approach. You also have to take on account that the Asians, Neareasterners and Egyptians made science before the Greeks (the Greek "invention" of science is a ridiculous myth, though maybe they invented the systematic philosophy), and the Greek culture in more related to, oriented to, and interested in, Egypt, the Middle East and Persia, than to the rest of Europe, where a cultural void existed in this sense.

We have to make more research, beginning with the antique documental and iconographic sources, understanding their bias, motivations and limitations.

[laEspadaAncha]

Hi Emanuel,

Thank you for both the links and for posting those illustrations!

I wondered the same thing about the early kukris, given the progression of 20th century military-pattern kukris transition from the more rounded spine to the more contemporary "kinked" angular spine... Then I found an earlier Indian kukri that had the angular kink lacking from the the more gentle curves of contemporary Nepali kukris, and upon viewing the friezes at Halebidu couldn't help but make the association.

I do think that my labeling of the swords / knives depicted in the friezes at Halebidu may have been prematurely presumptive. Persistence and luck paid off when I found this example online, with a Southwest Indian attribution:



This is a far more distinct example of an ayudha katti than I have previously seen, and indeed IMO a close match to the weapons depicted in the friezes at Halebidu.

Furthermore, in form it appears to have characteristics that significantly distinguish it from both the kukri - whether derived from the kopis, earlier Persian influences, or of independent origin - as well as from other expressions of the ayudha katti I have seen in print and on line. The distinctiveness of this particular example, would, IMHO, lend credence to Nidhi's suggestion of the existence of the forward-curved ayudha katti as an indigenous form.


And thank you for that most enlightening last post.

Regards,

Chris

[Emanuel]

Hi Chris,

This is type of sword in Elgood's book, a 16th century "flamboyant" sword. This is also why I asked about your definition of "khukri". Attached is an illustration from Rawson's The Indian Sword. Are all khukri?

I would say they all share certain characteristics with the khukri, but only the Nepalese type, with its unique set of characteristics (the cho and kaudi, for example) is a khukri .

The swords in this frieze panel you showed is very similar to the flamboyant sword, but obviously much earlier, Rawson actually shows one on right column...compare to the adya katti.

Cheers,
Emanuel

[laEspadaAncha]

Hi Emanuel,

Of course they're not "all" kukris, I am by no means suggesting any and all forward-curved Indian blades should be labeled as such. I am very familiar with the ayudha katti in its recognized form (in the 3 1/2 years I've spent in country since 1997 have always been on the look out for one). The kora is another distinctive forward-curved blade that no one would mistake as a kukri derivative.

I would however - as has the author - consider the latter five examples illustrated in the right-hand column ("forward-angled") to share enough common characteristics to consider the existence of common influences in their respective origins. However, as mentioned in an earlier post, the 12th C. weapons depicted in the friezes at Halebidu (as well as the example I posted above) are IMHO distinctive enough to merit consideration of - as you and Nidhi have suggested - an independent origin. The 18th C. kukri illustrated here (similar in design to an early Indian kukri in my possession) seems to more closely match the kopis in form than the aforementioned katti depicted in Hoysala art.

Anyway, another great illustration... I would say, based on those forms, the sword shown in my earlier post more closely resembles the Hoysala example (as well as the swords shown in the friezes at Halebidu) than the 16th C. "flamboyant sword" in your illustration (aside from maybe the hilt treatment).

Speaking of which, the illustration you posted (as well as its source) is previously unknown to me and the first attempt at a documented typology of forward-curving Indian edged weapons I have seen - IMO, alone worth the price of admission... thanks for the same.


Regards,

Chris

ETA: I just realized your reference to the "flamboyant" sword was regarding the photo I had included in my previous post, and have edited my post to reflect this.