New book and swords: Tibetan

dennee · 8th April 2006, 07:35 PM

Well done, RSWORD, I am excited to see your interesting examples. (I saw that you had successfully bid on the last one a couple of weeks ago and was interested to see what you thought upon examination. The "guard" generally conforms to the form of that in Stone, p. 594, No. 19, except that, as you suggest, the decorative part seems to have been lost.)

I have been wondering about the type attributed to minority peoples in the border regions. Superficially, at least, it is similar to some shown in photos of Daflas, Adi and Mishmi, for instance, but the grip/pommel is different from ones seen from those tribes. I have been wondering if that type might even be a simpler, earlier sort of military type from Central Tibet. I have also toyed with the idea that it could have been a trade sword, but I think the similarities between the tribal swords and these could just be incidental because they are all basic--it would seem like it would be easier to trade blades only rather than entire swords and that other peoples would "customize" them. I will post a photo of a similar sword in Drepung Monastery near Lhasa.

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8th April 2006, 07:35 PM	#16
dennee Member Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: College Park, MD Posts: 186	Well done, RSWORD, I am excited to see your interesting examples. (I saw that you had successfully bid on the last one a couple of weeks ago and was interested to see what you thought upon examination. The "guard" generally conforms to the form of that in Stone, p. 594, No. 19, except that, as you suggest, the decorative part seems to have been lost.) I have been wondering about the type attributed to minority peoples in the border regions. Superficially, at least, it is similar to some shown in photos of Daflas, Adi and Mishmi, for instance, but the grip/pommel is different from ones seen from those tribes. I have been wondering if that type might even be a simpler, earlier sort of military type from Central Tibet. I have also toyed with the idea that it could have been a trade sword, but I think the similarities between the tribal swords and these could just be incidental because they are all basic--it would seem like it would be easier to trade blades only rather than entire swords and that other peoples would "customize" them. I will post a photo of a similar sword in Drepung Monastery near Lhasa.