I will preface my remarks here by saying that I have never studied nor researched the piha.I have a few that I've acquired, but they are not really something I'm particularly interested in. Yes, the workmanship is sometimes excellent, and form is sufficiently pleasing for them to be appraised as items of art, but my interests lay elsewhere.
Some years ago I had a one of these pihas out on the kitchen table when one of my son's friends and his wife visted. The wife is Sri Lankan. She remarked that her father owned a piha that had been in the family for years and years and years, through several generations.I asked if her dad might consider sale. Her response was that I should talk to her dad. I did.
The sale was not on, he wanted to give it to his grandson when his lazy daughter eventually produced one---so far she'd been a total failure with only three daughters to her credit.
However, what he told me was that this piha , which was in a wooden scabbard along with a stylus, was in fact a scribes knife. His ancestor had been a court scribe. The knife was for preparation of the palm leaf that they wrote on, and the stylus was for writing.
So the question is this:- do we have any reliable documentary evidence of crazed Sri Lankans attacking their enemies with pihas, or were pihas in effect, old time office workers knives?
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