Ethnographic Arms & Armour - View Single Post - Karud: the weapon that did not exist:-)

Jim McDougall · 23rd August 2017, 05:15 PM

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.

23rd August 2017, 05:15 PM	#70
Jim McDougall Arms Historian Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: Route 66 Posts: 9,738	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.