Your history is necessarily painted with broad strokes, but I think it is accurate. What is missing from history however is what was really going on outside the political centers. From the perspective of swords, we think of jian as weapons of the elite, narrow bladed dao as weapons of the military, and wide bladed choppers as weapons of the peasant militias and rebel groups. However, simple village made jian are quite common, and as I have mentioned seem to fall into two groups, the late Qing "militia jian" and the Ming style "iron jian". I am using the two different names simply to differentiate between the two groups. Iron jian with twenty-inch blades are quite common as are militia jian with 24-inch blades. I have full sized chang jian from both groups however. The jian pictured has a 24-inch blade, a bit longer than is usual. Among the early examples the rounded pommels seem to be slightly earlier than the ones with smaller more angular fittings. Another common early to mid Qing weapon is the clipped tip, straight-backed, jian shaped dao. I have been building my collection of village weapons, so I should have several examples to show shortly.
Josh
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12th January 2008, 04:58 PM
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