Thinking about it, we've got a number of different influences going on with tridents. These include:
--multipronged and barbed fishing spears. This is purely functional, and based on the need to a) hit the fish, and b) keep it on the points. There are a number of forms from all over the world, anywhere people fish with spears. The classical trident actually appears to be a minority shape, actually.
--peasant forks, for hay, manure, etc. Again, these are tools, and I think they got weaponized in parts as military forks (although one reference suggests that military forks were also used for doing things like manipulating siege letters). Forks have been militarized elsewhere (China, India, Nepal), as shown above.
--tiger forks. These seem to be a primarily Chinese invention, and seem to be based on the same principle as the boar spear (e.g. keep the dangerous critter down at the pointy end of the shaft).
--Parrying weapons: as with the boar spear or tiger fork, the general principle is to catch the attacker (sword, spear, staff) and keep it from reaching you, and a fork is one way of catching a weapon. It's not ideal (especially in a small hand weapon), but it can work (especially when there's a long handle between you and the fork). Despite what some Karatekas say, sais reportedly work better on staffs than on swords, unless the swordsman doesn't know much about what he's doing.
--Oceanic symbolism: I think this primarily comes from the Mediterranean, where the trident became associated with Neptune and Poseidon. I'm pretty sure that the trident showed how "Brittania rules the waves."
--Trinitarian symbolism. In Christianity, we have God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. In Hinduism, we have Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva, and so forth. Three is once of those highly symbolic numbers, which is why (I think) trisuls and tridents get used around temples quite a lot, especially in India and China. Interesting that in Christianity, the trident seems to be more the devil's fork than something associated with, say, monasteries.
So is it right to consider all tridents to be equal? I'm not sure. Fun topic though.
Best,
F
|