Hi Marius,
I will not contest your knowledge of how patas were used in combat, in such way that they had to have extremily flexible blades, otherwise becoming impractical. I do not possess or have read any literature on that specific field, other than a written work mentioning that they required an intense school training.
But i make a point in questioning that the majority of pata blades were manufactured locally, as what i heard is the contrary.
In HOMENS ESPADAS E TOMATES by Rainer Daehnhardt he pretends that the majority pata blades were European, deliberately imported for such purpose, being brought by Portuguese and Venetian traders ... notwithstanding that the earlier examples of pata the author knows are from the end XV century and, in such cases, blades may have been repurposed from captured swords. Interesting to notice that, from the nine examples from the author's collection that illustrate the quoted book, only two are of Indian manufacture.
Of course this is worth what is worth.
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