Quote:
Originally Posted by Ren Ren
In my opinion, the blade is quite typical for this part of Indochina. The decor is a stylized image of the constellations. The same or very similar ones were depicted on ancient Vietnamese flags, which, for example, were used in Nam Giao - the ceremony of sacrifice to the Earth and Sky. On Chinese blades, the stylized image of the seven stars of the Big Dipper can often be seen, but this is the first time I see it on a Vietnamese blade. And the style itself is different from the Chinese.
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Thank you for the wonderful input so far, it adds a good deal to what we know about a field about which so little reference material exists.
On this blade, yes, the arrangement is different from the usual Chinese, but I still see seven "stars". As other readers are no doubt familiar with, the typical Chinese arrangement on double-edged blades is a simple zigzag to accommodate the overall shape of the space; on sabers you occasionally see them as inlaid dots, typically between segmented channels along the dorsal profile.