Jamdhar/katar why do we call it a katar?

[Help]

Thank you for the link, yes the reference is to 'the knives' of the Kafir... I was trying so hard to be accurate too as that was my first post...

[Jens Nordlunde]

Hello Help, welcome to the forum.

It is difficult to say when, what we call a katar, was called so. It could be Egerton, but it could also have been a number of others, like Hendley, Watt, Burton or someone else, all writing about the same time. The name could even be a lot older, and I am afraid we will never know for sure.

[Help]

Hi there,
Thanks for the reply Jens and the extra information. As I mentioned it's something I've been researching- not the entymological origin, so I'm probably in the wrong thread, my apologies for that - but the origin of the error of what is commonly known as Egerton's error. I obviously have a huge amount of respect for G.C. Stone's work, I just think the wrong person got the blame on this one.

[Jens Nordlunde]

Hi All,
I was making a search for 'Katar', and read some quite old mails on the subject.
This made me remember an article I have written about the age of the katar, which I could trace back to Orissa in the tenth century. The first accepted written description of a katar is by Ibn Battuta in the 14th century, but in the article a drawing of the early one is shown, made by the renowned Indian historian Rajendralala Mitra (1823/24-1891).
Should anyone be interested in reading the article, it can be found here.
Arms & Armour, volume 10, no 1. Royal Armouries, Leeds 2013.
I cant put it on the forum as the publisher has the copyright - sorry.
Jens

[bhushan_lawate]

Hi All,

My two cents..!!!

Jamdhar -- originated from the Sanskrit word "Yama Daunstra" literally meeting tooth of Yama -- God of Death

Katar -- is a distorted form of "Kattarak" in Sanskrit -- which means a weapon carried on waist belts. This was used as a dress dagger in the Indian peninsula for a long time similar to the likes of Chillanum or Pesh Kabz.


I can't find anything at the moment to show how these words distorted and came into vogue.

Regards,
Bhushan

[Ibrahiim al Balooshi]

http://www.edenics.net/english-word-....aspx?word=CUT

Quote"Icelandic kuta (to cut with a knife) represents one of the oldest KT cut words. There's Latin caedere (to cut), but somehow there is no Indo-European alleged “root.”Unquote.

Salaams All. Trying to trace the word root and implications of influence of one system to another is probably impossible... see the reference above. The word cut appears in English to be derived out of cutten ...from The Scandanavian link. Kutti; knife / Kutte; cut. The mix ups occur due to similar sounding words that appear to be interesting, though, co-incidental. I would therefor rule out any direct linguistic link through to or from English. Accidental transmission, however, is always possible.

I would agree broadly with the above by Beoram and since it is probably from the ancient Sanscrit...it originated therein. What is interesting is whether Quaddara is associated since the link to Kattara seems evident. As Jim says Quote"I have always considered interesting that the Persian'quaddara' and the Omani 'kattara' seem to have thier terms so closely associated to the term for these daggers".Unquote. Personally I think it refers to the curved cutting blade in general terms thus it can be used for daggers or swords...(Then of course that has its problems since Katta have straight blades.) The problem is escaped since in Arabia we don't have that weapon...My final paragraph shows from where I think the quaddara/kattara appears on the screen. I think meaning "long curved cutter" in this sense.

What has to be remembered is that the transition would have been muddled, cloudy at best and unrelated technically and perhaps it is best to imagine the term in its red herring robes...An accident. The word thus becomes used in the Ethnographic sense. For example Omani people don't use the word Shamshir and often they mix up Kattara with Sayf. (but for good reasons..in the latter, Sayf, is the generic word for sword and anyway curved swords joined the debate quite late in the case of the big curved European blades around the early 18thC and a little earlier perhaps for curved Shamshir..Straight blades on the other hand had been around for 10 centuries before that (in Oman).

I refer finally to my opening cut (scuse pun) with another quote from the reference Quote"Arabic qadda is “he cut lengthwise.” Syriac has similar QD cutters. Arabic qasa (he cut, clipped) and Akkadian (ancient Mesopotamian) qasasu (to hew or cut off)."Unquote.

see also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akkadian_language

Regards,
Ibrahiim al Balooshi.

[Jim McDougall]

Jens, it is fantastic that you posted this, and I look forward to reading your article on this long standing mystery of the 'katar' . I know this is a topic we have pursued for many years, with you always tenaciously researching through so many resources and venues, that your article would represent virtually the consummate knowledge on these to date .

Ibrahhim and Bhushan , thank you for the intriguing input on the constant conundrum of the etymology of this term. The so called 'Egerton' error is of course at the root of much of the dilemma in researching these as relying on contemporary narratives and accounts of periods far into history becomes extremely dangerous in drawing conclusions or theories. This is of course because a descriptive term can only imply what a item is to the modern reader, for semantics and transliterations over many years are among other linguistic matters are very much in play.

Getting back to the katar, that is the transverse gripped dagger distinctive to India, it is good to get back to the fascinating study and discussion of these unique daggers, and with Jens, whom I think is one of our foremost specialists on them.

Thank you Jens!!!

All the best,
Jim

[AhmedH]

Originally Posted by Ibrahiim al Balooshi

http://www.edenics.net/english-word-....aspx?word=CUT

Quote"Icelandic kuta (to cut with a knife) represents one of the oldest KT cut words. There's Latin caedere (to cut), but somehow there is no Indo-European alleged “root.”Unquote.

Salaams All. Trying to trace the word root and implications of influence of one system to another is probably impossible... see the reference above. The word cut appears in English to be derived out of cutten ...from The Scandanavian link. Kutti; knife / Kutte; cut. The mix ups occur due to similar sounding words that appear to be interesting, though, co-incidental. I would therefor rule out any direct linguistic link through to or from English. Accidental transmission, however, is always possible.

I would agree broadly with the above by Beoram and since it is probably from the ancient Sanscrit...it originated therein. What is interesting is whether Quaddara is associated since the link to Kattara seems evident. As Jim says Quote"I have always considered interesting that the Persian'quaddara' and the Omani 'kattara' seem to have thier terms so closely associated to the term for these daggers".Unquote. Personally I think it refers to the curved cutting blade in general terms thus it can be used for daggers or swords...(Then of course that has its problems since Katta have straight blades.) The problem is escaped since in Arabia we don't have that weapon...My final paragraph shows from where I think the quaddara/kattara appears on the screen. I think meaning "long curved cutter" in this sense.

What has to be remembered is that the transition would have been muddled, cloudy at best and unrelated technically and perhaps it is best to imagine the term in its red herring robes...An accident. The word thus becomes used in the Ethnographic sense. For example Omani people don't use the word Shamshir and often they mix up Kattara with Sayf. (but for good reasons..in the latter, Sayf, is the generic word for sword and anyway curved swords joined the debate quite late in the case of the big curved European blades around the early 18thC and a little earlier perhaps for curved Shamshir..Straight blades on the other hand had been around for 10 centuries before that (in Oman).

I refer finally to my opening cut (scuse pun) with another quote from the reference Quote"Arabic qadda is “he cut lengthwise.” Syriac has similar QD cutters. Arabic qasa (he cut, clipped) and Akkadian (ancient Mesopotamian) qasasu (to hew or cut off)."Unquote.

see also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akkadian_language

Regards,
Ibrahiim al Balooshi.

Salaams Ibrahiim!

Yes, the word "qudd" in Arabic means "to cut vertically", while the Arabic word "qutt" means "to cut horizontally". Some proponents of the theory claiming that Arabic was the mother tongue of all the other languages have cited the English word "cut" is derived from the Arabic word "qutt"; which means "cutting horizontally".

That being said, returning to Persian (which I've studied for two years in my faculty in 1997-1999), I can say there are many English and other Western and Northern European words that were derived from this language; among the countless words are:

Star, jungle, group, committee, mother, father, brother, daughter, restaurant, and skeleton.

But in 2001, while in Turkey, the Kurds there told me that the Kurdish language was the mother of the Persian language! They explained to me that the Kurdish words were the source from which the Persian words were derived. For example:

"Brother" in Persian is: "Broder"...In Kurdish, "Brother" is: "Bro"...the added "der" in Persian proves that Kurdish was the source.

The same for "mother" which is "mo" in Kurdish, and "moder" in Persian, and so on.

Just thought to share this with you!

Best regards,
Ahmed Helal Hussein

[Jens Nordlunde]

Originally Posted by bhushan_lawate

Hi All,

My two cents..!!!

Jamdhar -- originated from the Sanskrit word "Yama Daunstra" literally meeting tooth of Yama -- God of Death

Katar -- is a distorted form of "Kattarak" in Sanskrit -- which means a weapon carried on waist belts. This was used as a dress dagger in the Indian peninsula for a long time similar to the likes of Chillanum or Pesh Kabz.


I can't find anything at the moment to show how these words distorted and came into vogue.

Regards,
Bhushan

It is interesting to see how many suggestions we have here, but to my opinion the suggestion Bhushan gives is the most plausible.
Jens

[josh stout]

So "katar" is still in error, but is not completely out of line in describing a smaller edged weapon with a Sanskrit etymology.

On the fascinating but completely off topic discussion on the origin of languages, I would like to point out that there is a reasonable conjecture linking a great flood to the spread of agriculture and animal husbandry.
For those who are interested in the interplay of mythology and history (neither of which has much to do with evolution), Göbekli Tepe in northern Turkey seems to be the first ritual site, and is within a few miles of where wheat and other ancient grains were developed at the end of the last ice age. This technology appears to have spread along the shores of the Black Sea, at the time, a shallow freshwater lake below sea level. People were living along the shores of this lake, perhaps in floating houses separated from the shore for protection. (Archeologists have found the remains of pylons for structures along the shore.) When the great ice dam at the Bosporus broke, it would have appeared that the whole world was flooded. This culture predates the civilizations in the Fertile Crescent and may have helped give rise to them through the spread of farming technology as refugees from the flood spread into new areas. They brought their stories and language with them, and are quite likely to have inspired the Babylonian flood myth that the Jews incorporated into their mythology during the Babylonian captivity. I would not be surprised if, along with some truly ancient words relating to animal husbandry, such as “yoke”, there was not also a word for cutting with a cutter.
Josh