(double post)

The use of the term 'karud" goes way back, is it any wonder that people have accepted and use the term now, George Stone used in it 1934. That is over 70yrs I believe, and you suddenly want to eliminate the term because....can you explain again, I still cant quite figure out why we should stop using it.

A Glossary of the Construction, Decoration and Use of Arms and Armor: in All Countries and in All Times, by George Cameron Stone, 1934.

I have already SHOWN why, the images I posted show a straight bladed karud dagger, a pesh-kabz is curved bladed, unless you really believe there is absolutely no difference and they are exactly the same dagger and that the makers of these daggers believed that they were making the same dagger, but then if that were true why bother to make a straight bladed dagger and a curved bladed dagger?

Not to long ago you were the one arguing that certain swords that appeared to be shashka were in fact not actually shashka but just happened to look like shashka.

Now you are arguing that two daggers that look completely different are actually the same...humm....
:shrug:

Perhaps, you should re-read my original post and look at Fig.2. Everything you just said in your multiple posts was already there.
I do not think there is any reason for me to continue arguing with you: you either not reading or not comprehending.
Please feel free to use any word you wish.
I am going to bed.
Best wishes and good night.

Here is a reference to "karud", 1843



Cabool: A Personal Narrative of a Journey To, and Residence in that City, in the Years 1836, 7, and 8, Sir Alexander Burnes J. Murray, 1843

Ok, run off, but as for your post #2, it is blurry and you did not say were it can from or the date. Sorry you are unable to handle any type of disagreement with your theory but that is what people do on forums, disagree, argue and put their best research forward for others to judge.

I was just giving any interested people some visual proof that the word karud has fairly widely used for a long period of time. You are the one who out of the blue suddenly decided that we should completely stop using the word.

Mughal weapons in the Bābur-nāmā, Gayatri Nath Pant
Agam Kala Prakashan, 1989

I do believe that it has now been established that the romanised spellings "kard", and "karud" both represent the same object name when that name is written in the original script.

In fact, in language of origin, both these spellings refer to the same object.

Can anybody explain to me why it is that both spellings cannot be accepted, and used equally?

My field is not kards, karuds, khards or anything similar, but those of us who play with keris have exactly this same situation, there are innumerable ways of spelling "keris":- kris, cris, creese, are the most common, then there are the terms used in keris bearing cultures, words which bear no visible relationship to "keris".

But when Players with Keris talk amongst themselves, it doesn't seem to matter what word is used to refer to the object, we still understand one another.

In this Forum, and nowhere else to my knowledge, an artificial distinction has been drawn between the spelling "keris" and "kris". Keris refers to the dagger form, "kris" refers to the sword form, mostly from the Southern Philippines. Both these forms are by any academic definition keris --- or if we prefer "kris" --- but for purposes of discussion here we have this artificial, but useful, distinction, useful, because it has been decided that the sword version really belongs in the Forum that discusses swords. Let's call it an administrative decision.

When we look at the English language, we find one major spelling variation, that is between American English and British English, some words have two, or sometimes more, different spellings, but they are still the same word and still carry the same broad meaning, although, admittedly, meanings can vary according to specific societal usage, especially implied meanings.

There is a great deal of flexibility in the way language is used. Does it really matter if I spell a word using the UK spelling, and somebody else spells it using the American spelling?

It is general practice in English, and in many other languages, that where there are variations within a category of object, that variation is identified by use of an adjective. Kards and karuds are the same object but can possess a variation, thus in accord with general usage of the English language we would normally add an adjective to identify this variation.

Why is it that both spellings of this word cannot be used equally and the adjective added if that is thought to be necessary?

I simply cannot see the problem here.

Here is what Ariel had to say on the subject of karud, 2013

Because now the two words describe completely different daggers, did you see the comparison photos I posted showing the difference between the karud dagger and the kard dagger, do you really think that are the same??

Here are two google searches, on for kard and one for karud, see for yourself.

Kard https://www.google.com.ph/search?q=k...w=1278&bih=678

Karud https://www.google.com.ph/search?q=k...w=1278&bih=678

Actually ESTCRH, I don't see two completely different objects when I look at the two daggers that share the same name, I see two daggers that are the same, one of which has a blade variation.

However, I must admit, my weapons study is based in anthropology, sociology and language study, I can no longer regard myself as a true collector of weapons, rather I collect information on one particular type of weapon.

So when I see your "kard", or your "karud" I do not ask what collectors in New York, London or Patagonia call this dagger, I ask what the people who own the culture that generated this weapon call it.

It appears that these people had only one name for both varieties of the dagger.

This brings us back to common English usage. The original word has generated two spellings for the same word and object, and starting from the same root. As a general rule, the way the English language--- and many other languages --- handles this matter, when a variation in the object occurs, is to use a descriptor, an adjective, to differentiate one from the other.

So my question then is whether this is an English Language Forum, or whether we have our own jargon?

Perhaps we really do have our own jargon, as demonstrated by previous reference to the "kris/keris" matter. Now that was handled by the taking of an administrative decision. Possibly if it can be demonstrated that the bulk of people who are members of this Forum want two different words to describe two varieties of the same dagger, then a punitive system could be put in place to ensure that the correct jargon was used at all times.

Or maybe the matter is of such vital importance that a couple of new sub-forums could be set up, one for discussion of kards, one for discussion of karuds.

But on second thought, maybe that would not be such a good idea, because then all those troublesome Keris People might want all manner of sub-forums to discuss the vast variety to be found in keris forms.Straight blades in one forum, 3 wave blades in another, 5 wave blades in another, a separate forum for keris sajen, another for keris budo. The possibilities are endless.

A workable alternative for the kards and karuds would be to simply stick with the practices that govern common English usage.

Language is a tool that is used to vocalise thought.

Script is a tool that is used to present the vocalisation of thought in a graphic form.

Where two objects are thought of in the same way by the culture that owns those objects, the transliteration of the name shared by those objects should ideally remain true to the graphic representation of the original thought.

Where transliteration of one graphic representation to a different graphic representation results in more than one graphic representation of the original script, then it can be recognised that those additional graphic representations are equally true to the original for the new users of that word.

Thus, kard = karud, and if there is a variation in form of the object that is the owner of the name, it should be identified by use of an adjective together with the noun.

I apologise for the long winded comment. I find this subject fascinating, and it appears that for English Language professionals it is no less fascinating. What I have given above is a precis of a couple of hours discussion with an English Language academic

Kard/Karud is a Persian term and simply means "knife".

It is probably the same like with Indonesian weapons, "piso gading" also simply means "knife ivory". "Piso gading" seems to be a modern term. Maybe Kard/karud is also not the original designation.


Roland

Alan,

The point is that there are no two different spellings of Kard and Karud. In Persian it is spelled Kard and nothing else. As you have previously noted, the soft rolling of "r" gives an aural impression of yet another vowel after it ( "u" for Gilchrist and Moser, "e" for Holstein): an epenthesis. Karud is a word that did not exist in written form: it is just a result of a phonetical mishap.

That was the salient point of my inquiry into the origin of the word Karud in the contemporary Western literature, no more.

I find it amusing that there still are attempts to use a phonetical error to officially create a separate class of realia. Some phonetical peculiarities acquire a life of their own: in Arabic there is no phoneme "p"; thus the language of Pars became Farsi and Greco-Roman Neapolis became Nablus. Still, they refer to the same things.

As to the usage of Karud in unofficial discussions, I have no beef with it.

My point referred to "professional literature", and I clearly indicated it in the last sentence of my original post.

Yes Ariel, correct, as I wrote in my previous post:-

"--- The original word has generated two spellings for the same word and object---"

The people who owned the object and its name clearly thought of this object as the same thing, whether it had a straight blade or a waved blade, but through the process of transliteration that one word became two words when it passed into other languages and other script.

We're on the same page here, perhaps I was insufficiently clear in what I wrote.

As I understand it, for some collectors this "karud" word has become an addition to their lexicon of weapon names. In other words it has entered collector jargon. We know it is not legit. We know it is a construct, but if it helps some people express themselves clearly and save all that effort of using an adjective, it probably doesn't matter. The academics will continue to try their best to be precise, as you have demonstrated with your quotes, so the serious literature will remain correct, and the friendly social chatter can use whatever words everybody agrees to.

I'm not into kards, nor karuds, but if I was, I think I'd probably spell the word "khard", that seems to me to have a much more regal touch to it than the plebian old "kard". A little bit of aspiration never did do anything but put a slightly gilded edge to a word.

Alan, i believe this is correct when we are looking at the differences between what Estcrh insists should be called "karud" and the "pesh-kabz", however, there is quite a substantial difference in the blade forms between what collectors generally consider to be a "kard" and a "karud" as Estcrh clearly illustrates in his post #36. I don't believe anyone would confuse one of these knives with the other and they do probably need distinctly different names to avoid confusion in discussion. However, when we are looking at the "karud" (as recognized by Estcrh and others) and the pesh-kabz, to my eye we are indeed looking at a variation on the same blade design, one straight and one recurved. I see no trouble in calling a "karud" in this case a "straight pesh-kabz". But what people generally refer to as a "kard" could never be seen as a straight pesh-kabz. it is a completely different blade form.

Estcrh, you seriously see the wavy bladed keris on the left side of my post #27 as "straight blades"? You cannot see how what i posted applies to this topic of discussion? I am afraid that you have left me confused in this matter. :confused:

LOL! There are probably at least twice as many named parts to a keris blade as there is for a katana. That doesn't even begin to get into the variant dhapurs (blade profiles) and pamor patterns. And then the concepts of tangguh that categorize blades by era geography. Believe me the Japanese sword has nothing on keris when it comes to names and categories. Please, don't get me started. ;)

David,
You are correct: we can compose an endless list of Oriental weapons with the same name and different blades or handles ( Ottoman yataghan is just one example), or with different names and identical construction ( see Van Zonneveld's book of Indonesian weapons).

Most, if not all of it, is due to ethnic or even village traditions.

Early Oriental societies had no regulation patterns. The same blade with different handles could have been a Peshkabz with straight blade ( once again, an example of my magnanimity: a Karud) or an Afridi Choora. Asking why did the knifemakers manufacture Peshkabz with straight blade instead of a recurved one is pointless, akin to asking why some Kris are wavy and some are straight or why Zeibek yataghans have T-like pommel instead of an eared one and integral bolster instead of flimsy hollow brass one.

As an empirical i am fond of neologisms but, when Fernando Fulgosio decided to put a name to this thing in 1872, he was hardly building one. Remember there was no record of how this sword was called by its ancestor users, so he got hold of some latin (Roman) script quoting this sword they greatly appreciated, ensis falcâtus and, aware of the curved (sickle) attribution, off he went. Only in the current case he made it simple, only opting for connoting the form of the blade and declining the substantive 'sword', after ensis.
Certainly more complicated is when authors have to refer, in their own (english) phonetic manner, to swords named in all languages, attending to the sound pronounced by their nationals; and eventually omitting the term ethimology, something which would give the reader a more accurate perception. I see how Portuguese established contact with weapons (and all) they encountered during their XVI century travels and chroniclers had to put them in writing; the deal was to turn into portuguese as per the sound they heard. Then once it is written, is perpetuated.
You don't see many (any) weapons in Stone with a Portuguese name; he entitles his work as 'in all countries in all times' but i suspect he didn't contemplate this little corner. The only time so far i found a familiar term (page 3) is result of a gaffe; he joins the term Adaga with Adarga, whereas the first is a dagger and the second is a shield... terms with completely different origins.

You mean arroz doce, sweet rice; your portuguese is improving :cool:.

Interesting topic, Ariel. I applaud and support your work here.
And you are correct, I didn't use that term in Arms of the Paladins because it did not exist as a distinct word in its period of use. Like a number of other inaccurate names applied to weapons, it was recorded by early European and American students of arms and armor who were seeking to establish a viable taxonomy, as they heard it in situ.

Fernando and Alan, please forgive me for reiterating what you have already stated with modesty, simplicity, and complete accuracy in this thread... Karud is nothing more than the precise transliteration into Latin letters of the way the Persian word kard (which just means "knife") was and is pronounced in Persian and Dari: with a distinct alveolar trill. Another example would be the word for “leather,” charm, which comes out sounding like charrr-um.)

The problem lies, not with Persian, but with the pronunciation of the letter R in American and British English, French and German; it is virtually impossible to transliterate even an approximately similar sound in these languages without inserting a U between the R and D, simply because none of them roll the R in common speech. Italian, Spanish, Russian (and many others,) however, would likely not have the same problem. Conversely, I could not for a moment imagine how an Iranian scholar would go about transliterating the American pronunciation of the word squirrel into Persian.

But this discussion is ALL about what WESTERN collectors, dealers etc call these weapons due to the fact that Ariel is saying that the terms now being use should not be used.

Who cares what some person in a village called it other than as a historical footnote, and since you admit you have no interest in these weapons I do not understand your point. For example, I have absolutely no interest in keris and would not even try to tell the people interested in these weapons what to call the different types.

I am inclined to believe tht this is a discussion that has taken place in Russian forums and is now being played out on this forum for some unknown reason.

ESTCRH I do understand that it can be difficult to follow everything that is written in a posted comment, and I also understand that the way in which I choose to write my comments can be quite difficult for some people to follow.

Please accept my apologies for any confusion I may have caused you.

To clarify:- please be aware that I have absolutely no intention of attempting to tell anybody with an interest in kards or karuds or anything else for that matter, what they should call these things. In my post #54 you will see that I actually endorse the current situation, where the word "karud" has achieved recognition as collector jargon.

I believe that far from saying that the word "karud" should not be used, Ariel has actually suggested that since it has become a part of collector jargon he can see no reason why it should not continue thus, however, in serious publications that try take account of the cultural context, a slightly more accurate approach that considers word origin should be employed.

In this current discussion, my interest is purely in the way in which language is used.

Ariel's post that opened the discussion was centered on a matter that has concerned me for most of my life, and that is the way in which language develops and is used.

As I also have a + 60 year involvement with edged weaponry, and specifically with the keris, that interest in language has not surprisingly extended into the use of language, both spoken and written, in the field of edged weaponry.

In respect of the two words "kard", and "karud", it is very clear that in the culture of origin only one word was used to refer to both styles of this dagger, however, through a variation in transliteration, when that single word entered other languages, and the original script was Romanised, that single word became two different words.

It appears that one of those two words has now entered the jargon of one group of people:- collectors who are based outside the culture of origin of the dagger in question.

I do understand that many collectors of many different types of things, including weaponry, have no interest in, nor understanding of, the cultures of origin of the things they collect, these collectors focus on the physical object they collect and create their own terms of reference. I have no problem with this: it is what these people do, and it is no business of mine how they pursue their interest.

But other collectors take a different approach to their collecting:- they attempt to obtain a deeper understanding of the thing that they choose to collect and this very often leads to a study of the culture, society, history, language, technology and so forth of the thing that they collect.

So we have the simple collector who focuses on the object of collection, and we have the enquiring collector who extends his focus into the background of the object that he collects.

Neither approach is correct nor incorrect, it simply reflects the nature of the collector.

Actually most of the collectors I know and dealers as well are quite interested in the historical accuracy of descriptions but they know enough to separate the historical description that was used by the original owners / users...(who were not collectors) from the currently used and accepted description of weapons types that are different enough to be called by a distinct name.

I can name many such examples and since the pesh-kabz and the karud are very idenifiable by their differences SERIOUS collectors decided (way in the past) to give these distinct types names...a very simple way to categorize weapons and armor, this is what western collectors do as opposed to the people who originally owned and used these items. This does not make the people who use this method less scholarly, if fact in my mind it makes these people even more knowledgable since they have to ability to travel both worlds instead of being stuck in one or the other.

Having a "deeper understanding" does not mean you have to ignore the currently used terms just because some villager in the past, who did not collect weapons at all but simply owned and used them, and called all daggers, swords etc by the same name.

Ariel suggests they we ignore history and pretend it does not exist by stating that it is somehow unprofessional to mention the word "karud" in any so called scholarly publications, I think the exact opposite, I think it is unprofessional not to mention the decades old currently used descriptions....trying to erase the past is not very scholarly.

Yes ESTCRH, we all have our own opinions, and of course we are permitted to express those opinions, most people in this Forum seem to have a tendency to respect the opinions of others, just as I respect your opinions and I also respect Ariel's opinions.

However, my respect does not extend to blind agreement with any opinion.

Folks the point of debate and sharing of knowledge is to express and then reflect on what the other has said.

Let us all keep our emotional reactions out of this please. This is not pointed at any one person, but everyone.

Just to lighten things up: :)

What is needed is for everybody to use the agreed standard nomenclature for these blades.
The Peshkabz should always be referred to by its proper designation, a Fritz Lieberson type 14 model 10, the Kard must be identified as the Fritz Lieberson type 14 model 11 and the Karud correctly identified as the Fritz Lieberson type 14 model 11A ( the model 11B designation should be avoided unless there is an R in the month)

Looks like a duck
Walks like a duck
Quacks like a duck

ITS A DUCK :)

Very interesting discussion but I must stress that in Persian the word "KARD/KARUD" simply means knife... OF ANY TYPE.

The same way the word "SHAMSHIR" means sword... of any type.

Or the same way the word "KILIJ" in Turkish means sword ... of any type.

Or the same way the word "BICHAK" in Turkish means knife... of any type.

Yet, it were the European researchers/collectors/scholars who associated all these generic local names to very specific types of weapons.

Whether this happened because of a missunderstanding of the local language or because of a deliberate decission is relevant mainly for the scholar and scientific accuracy. For us, as collectors, is more important to have clear and precise terms to accurately describe each type of weapon.

Since there is NO ethnographically and linguistically correct term to describe precisely the straight-bladed Pesh-kabz, I believe we are perfectly justified to use the term "KARUD" to describe it, even if it may be ethnographically and linguistically incorrect.

And what would you name this one: 30 inches long. Shown below next to a more common "Karud" or "kard" or "Peshkabz" 14 inches long.

Easy
Khyber Karud
or Khyber kard...
I don't know now I'm confused....
:confused:

Robert Guy I like your style! great humor is a relief in these situations where frustration needs a relief valve.

Actually, I too am always fascinated by language and etymology, but I am far from a linguist, and do not speak any language but English. From this standpoint, I include these angles in my often deep research historically into these weapons and their forms.
While I do not agree that the term 'karud' be lifted from our 'jargon' (well put Alan!) I do highly applaud the research work and articles by both Ariel and Dmitry.
In all of this there should not be conflict or debate, but constructive examining of all of this research to comprehensively establish the data to emplace in the historical footnotes concerning these weapons.

I think of so many examples of these kinds of situations in ethnographic forms where terms have been often applied arbitrarily in western attempts to classify and categorize them. The koummya; janwii; khanjhar; janbiyya; of course 'katar'; and many, many others beyond the karud, pesh kabz, kard, bichaq group.
Virtually all of these have extenuating circumstances in their names linguistically and etymologically, but these are part of the fascination and intrigue of ethnographic arms as far as I can see.

It would be completely misplaced and counterproductive to remove any of these terms from our glossaries, as they are the semantic fiber of our countless years of research on them. To revise and update our future literature to include these valuable findings and new evidence on etymology adds profoundly to the history of these weapons, and that should be our focus.

Yes Jim, spot on.

Maybe its time for a 21st century Stone to appear.

If one would want it to be not only a "picture" book for a quick attribution, but a more academic one, with references, controversies, ethnic and time variations, that will require at least doubling the size of Stone's Glossary and several years of dedicated effort by a multi-member team of narrow-field specialists.

A Herculean task....

Agreed Ariel.

Nothing of value comes easy.

I would name this one "MINE"!!! A beauty, nicely made, an excellent example of a gigantic karud...certainly not a kard or pesh-kabz. There are from time to time certain weapons that just bend the rules a bit, not quite one thing or another, not everything is a perfect fit. A kyber-karud..humm

Ariel, that would be the only way to have a complete history of an item, it is a Herculean task, which is why I am amazed that anyone attempts it, even on a small scale. Take for instance Trevor Absolon, author of several books on Japanese armor. He has been working on a new book, basically The History of Japanese Armor...years of painstaking research, collecting obscure references, images etc. Finally he is in the process getting ready to publish...but he has to keep putting the date back due to some new information suddenly being available, its hard to put the finishing touches on something that will be discussed and argued with for the rest of your life.

I think khyber-karud is a good description, it is nothing like what collectors call a "kard".

I think this is a good, precise description of the discussion here. I would think that using an accepted and known name for this type of dagger, whether you think it is a variation of the pesh-kabz or a similar but completely separate type is a good thing, people who accept and use "karud" are on the same page when discussing these weapons. As for a any publications, why not explain the controversy about the name, then people will have a well rounded knowledge of the items history.

Eric,

It seems to me that finally you have actually read my posts. This is exactly what I have been saying from the beginning.

Good job.

What's in a name?
 

I've watched this discussion unfold in a manner similar to previous issues of nomenclature. Each time we arrive at a consistent set of themes--the collector who wants precision mainly for cataloging purposes, and the collector with broader ethnographic and cultural interests who wants to understand how we arrived at a particular name for a specific weapon. I would suggest that these are not necessarily competing approaches, but rather complementary.

The early descriptions of cultural items by Western authors were often incorrect. Sometimes the items had various names in the original culture which makes their description more complicated.

In this case, Ariel has made a strong case that the word karud is actually a misidentification of the Persian word kard. Perhaps if the early Western scribes had written the word they heard as kar'd—with the apostrophe representing the short, soft vowel in the spoken form—then this confusion would have been avoided. However, we are left with the word karud that has now found general acceptance in the collectors' lexicon, and we are unlikely to expunge it.

Some of you have pointed to other examples where a general term meaning "knife" has been applied more specifically to certain weapon forms. I would add to this list the Philippine words bolo, itak, and sundang, each of which are generic words for "knife" but have taken on more or less specificity according to where the term is used.

Slight differences in pronunciation in the local cultures also contribute to confusion. For example, the familiar Moro barong (with a short "o") is also pronounced barung (where the "u" is pronounced as a long "oo", as in moot) in some areas of the southern Phlippines. I use the less familiar spelling when describing the weapon because this avoids confusion with the barong tagalog, which is a shirt commonly worn by Filipinos.

I'm sure this is not the last time we will be discussing terms for weapons and coming across the errors of the past. Each time we go through this exercise I think it's important to ask, what are we trying to achieve in terms of clarity of description?

What's in a name?

Ian.

I see where you are coming from, Eric and respect that. It is good to have the ability to categorise what often becomes vast collections of items that often have more similarities than differences. The kard being an example of such items. But here is what can be considered as the underlying difference between a collector genuinely interested in the history of said items and a hoarder with a knack for categorising: the history and the most accurate ethnography of objects.

As collectors, it is important to see that we are preservers of human heritage (that of people in some villages too!) and as such, must strive to preserve it in the way it was, not as typos and mishearing. That said, as someone currently engaging in a research, the effort of western collectors and researchers is most valuable, but so does the remaining heritage of some person living in a village somewhere. The idea that somehow the locals have forgotten their heritage and the truth is only found in old oriental works is quite misleading and sadly too prevalent amongst collectors.

What Ariel did is quite helpful, it helps dispel a myth. A small step and a highly appreciated one.