Karud: the weapon that did not exist:-)

[Jim McDougall]

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.

[A. G. Maisey]

Yes Jim, spot on.

Maybe its time for a 21st century Stone to appear.

[ariel]

If one would want it to be not only a "picture" book for a quick attribution, but a more academic one, with references, controversies, ethnic and time variations, that will require at least doubling the size of Stone's Glossary and several years of dedicated effort by a multi-member team of narrow-field specialists.

A Herculean task....

[A. G. Maisey]

Agreed Ariel.

Nothing of value comes easy.

[estcrh]

Originally Posted by ariel

If one would want it to be not only a "picture" book for a quick attribution, but a more academic one, with references, controversies, ethnic and time variations, that will require at least doubling the size of Stone's Glossary and several years of dedicated effort by a multi-member team of narrow-field specialists.

A Herculean task....

Ariel, that would be the only way to have a complete history of an item, it is a Herculean task, which is why I am amazed that anyone attempts it, even on a small scale. Take for instance Trevor Absolon, author of several books on Japanese armor. He has been working on a new book, basically The History of Japanese Armor...years of painstaking research, collecting obscure references, images etc. Finally he is in the process getting ready to publish...but he has to keep putting the date back due to some new information suddenly being available, its hard to put the finishing touches on something that will be discussed and argued with for the rest of your life.