BARUNG BLADES

[Philip]

Originally Posted by Ian

Hi Philip,

Thanks for posting these contemporary knives. I think the main distinction between these knives and a barung is that the tang comes of the blade closer to the spine on your examples, whereas the tang of a barung is located pretty much centrally on the blade, with both the edge and the spine curving towards it.


Ian

True, its reasonable to take account of a modification of design in the transition from tool to weapon just as the medieval pruning-hook morphed into the roncone.

I do note, however, that in all the cases of Moro blades with Chinese, or Chinese-ish markings (there is an example on another thread whose markings I half-jokingly suggested might be Cyrillic) that I have seen, they are all barongs. Has anyone seen these marks on any other southern Philippine blade forms, such as the campillon, bangkung, or panabas? (Please post them if you have images of such, as they must be rare). How about central and northern blade forms so marked -- tenegres, talibons, etc. I've never heard of them but that doesn't necessarily mean that one doesn't exist somewhere in a collection.