Miao Dao

Discussion in 'Weapons' started by DrunkenMasterBE, Feb 10, 2014.

  1. Hannibal

    Hannibal Cry HAVOC and let slip the Dogs of War!!! Supporter

    Or alternatively could be a hobbit......
     
  2. Dean Winchester

    Dean Winchester Valued Member

    The gentleman in the second picture down is a rather big chap.
     
  3. Ben Gash CLF

    Ben Gash CLF Valued Member

    The Pu Dao (literally horse knife) was allegedly an anti-cavalry weapon (although I think it's probably more likely to itself be a weapon of heavy cavalry).
    The problem is that these weapons all blur together somewhat. China's a big place and had numerous military, paramilitary and civil armed groups with little in the way of standardised procurement. Indeed, in CLF we have one form (horse cutting knife) for all two handed sabres and short halberds (I typically practice it with an "executioner's knife"). Coupled with this many of the weapons we consider "traditional" are in fact a modern re-interpretation of traditional weapons for civilian, martial arts or indeed triad purposes (the latter is especially true of the butterfly knives - pre 1900 a very different weapon). While the Ming record and rare surviving examples show a variety of 2 handed sabres there's only a passing resemblance to what we would today consider a Miao Dao (at least half were ring handled for starters). I would posit that the Miao Dao we see today probably has it's origins in the first Sino-Japanese war and are modelled after Tachi, although to be fair they're not THAT different from scaled up versions of the imperial army sabres.
     
  4. Hannibal

    Hannibal Cry HAVOC and let slip the Dogs of War!!! Supporter

    It seesm to be a fairly global standard for big slicey things - see my Grosse Messer comment above
     
  5. Ben Gash CLF

    Ben Gash CLF Valued Member

    Basic mechanics, a sweeping curve makes for cleaner, lower effort cutting, and a long blade has a limit to how thick it can be.
     
  6. Ben Gash CLF

    Ben Gash CLF Valued Member

    The problem with spears is they need to be used en masse and that requires movement in formation which takes a lot of training to get right. Plenty of battles have been lost because formations fell apart while turning. Also the terrain in southern China and the nature of the enemy probably didn't favour such tactics anyway. However, if you take a farmer who's used to scything and chopping and give him a da dao you can make him pretty dangerous pretty quickly I should think.
     
  7. Ben Gash CLF

    Ben Gash CLF Valued Member

    Seen a couple of things in the past fortnight that I thought had something interesting to add to these discussions.
    First a piece from the ever excellent Kung Fu Tea on the importance of symbolism in military equipment http://chinesemartialstudies.com/20...mbolic-echoes-within-the-modern-martial-arts/
    and secondly an interesting video from Schola Gladiatoria which describes 2 handed blades to be easier to use. [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wDjjLnKRcI"]Longswords are not 'manly' and rapiers are not 'un-manly' - YouTube[/ame]
     
  8. 47MartialMan

    47MartialMan Valued Member

    Yeah, but spears can be thrown from a safer distance :D

    (Unless you were trained like Kwai Chang Caine from Shaolin)
     

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