Ayda Katti, Moplah, Corg, Matchu Sword or Something else

[Ian]

Mercenary,

Thank you for pointing out the widespread use of similar sickle-shaped knives. A few years ago, I posted pictures of a hansia from Nepal/Northern India which fits into this discussion. That thread can be found here. The design is very commonly found as a tool that could be used as a weapon if needed.

[Mercenary]

Originally Posted by Ian

A few years ago, I posted pictures of a hansia from Nepal/Northern India which fits into this discussion. That thread can be found here. The design is very commonly found as a tool that could be used as a weapon if needed.

Thank you very much!
The point is that in origin all such items were sickles for agricultural work, as their names suggest.
hansia - sickle
Arival or aruval - sickle
All other names that include "arival" are different types of sickles.
"Val" means "sharp tool" like saw, plough, scissors and of course sickle and sword.
Congavellum = Kongaval (from Egerton). I suppose it was in original "caan val" (Malayalam) or "konam val" (Tamil) - a curved sword.

[SidJ]

A similar but better example sold at Olympia auctions in London on 6 December. Pic available on the website.

[Nihl]

Originally Posted by SidJ

A similar but better example sold at Olympia auctions in London on 6 December. Pic available on the website.

...And I was the one that acquired it! I got both of the kongkavaals that were sold at that auction actually. I can provide pics of them if people want when they get here. The photos attached below are the auction photos for each sword.

Also just a tangent since I have done more research into these odd swords since I first made my earlier posts: The proper spelling, I have found, is indeed "kongkavaal". "Kongk" is the tamil-malayali adjective describing something that is bent or dramatically curved, whilst "vaal", as established earlier in this thread, means sword. Dravidian languages are agglutinative mind you all, so adjectives and other "word modifiers" are simply attached to the beginning/ends of words (instead of being seperate words themselves), just like how prefixes and suffixes work in english. The use of a double "a" in "vaal" is just to emphasize the fact that a long/open "a" is how the vowel should be pronounced, and while it might seem silly or "extra" to some, it's not all that uncommon to see Tamil (and other dravidian) people online transliterate their language in this manner, taking special care in how they write vowels and designate emphasis (I have seen, for example, vaal written as "vaaL", with the idea being that the capital L shows how emphasis is placed on pronouncing that consonant).

All other versions of spelling this word are basically corruptions of kongkavaal, like "kongavela" and "congavellum", the latter of which is basically the anglicized version of "kongkavaalam", which is the form of kongkavaal used to specifically refer to a single, physical example.

[SidJ]

Congrats! I bid on those myself. Excellent items. I settled for the smaller aruval with peacock carving.

[werecow]

On a weird little side note, the word congavellum sounds very Latin to me so I decided just for fun to try to google translate it. Apparently "conga vellum" translates to "prepare the skin".

[G. Mansfield]

Thank you for this information, Nihl. It is greatly appreciated. Hope to see closer photos once you recieve the item. Here is one from my collection that I acquired a few years back for the records.

https://oriental-arms.com/product/a-...-malbar-coast/

-Geoffrey