Cold steel from the museum
An image of a dragon on the blade of a Dao saber from the collection of the Penza Regional Museum of Local Lore. Author's photo
MOVING FROM HALL TO HALL,
PEOPLE ARE MOVING HERE...
S. Mikhalkov. “In the Museum of V.I. Lenin”
PEOPLE ARE MOVING HERE...
S. Mikhalkov. “In the Museum of V.I. Lenin”
Weapon with my own eyes. Not only in the Lenin Museum do people move, moving from hall to hall, but in every other place as well. Unfortunately, not all museums have everything at their disposal available for viewing. For example, in many local museums, recently, a serious obstacle to exhibiting samples of weapons has become the tightening of the rules for their storage and this very display. Its security has been transferred to the local National Guard, and therefore all of it, except for models from the store, must be stored in sealed iron cabinets, behind iron doors and with the alarm switched on.
Well, it can only be exhibited in specially equipped showcases, again with individual alarms, and each such showcase is very, very expensive. That is, displaying weapons in modern provincial museums does not pay off.
It’s too much work and worries, but it doesn’t give you money—and museums are required to earn it, since the museum is now a commercial institution. So museums prefer to exhibit things that the commissions of the Russian Guard no longer consider weapons. For example, a rusted rifle barrel or a PPSh drilled to the limit. That is, there seem to be weapons in the exhibition, but in reality there are none.
So if you have already found yourself... no, not in the weapons room itself, entry is prohibited for outsiders, but in its, so to speak, vestibule, and some samples were brought out for you to “identify” - you should rejoice like a child. Because not everyone is so lucky. I already wrote once that I visited the Penza Regional Museum of Local Lore for the first time in 1961, and it made an amazing impression on me. It’s so amazing that up until the fourth grade I made dioramas at home with primitive people hunting a cave bear and dinosaurs eating each other. I made them from plasticine, but to get the “grass” – moss – I had to go to the forest. For some reason, our “house moss” that grew near the fence in damp places did not suit me.
Something like a coiled dragon...
Among edged weapons, I was greatly impressed by a saber with a blade that widened towards the tip and an image of a dragon embossed on the blade near the hilt. And I must say that in the same 1961, Soyuzmultfilm, based on the fairy tales of Southeast Asia, released the wonderful cartoon “Dragon”, and it just showed a magic sword with which the boy Maung Tin kills a dragon. And this sword was very similar to the one that hung on the wall in the museum, which made a particularly strong impression on me.
But, it’s clear that at that time I was just looking at it, and I didn’t know what it was for a very long time.
And here the dragon is shown in all its glory!
Meanwhile, as it turned out, the museum actually possessed (and possesses!) a very interesting example of edged weapons - the Dao-darn saber (or sword). There are different forms of Chinese national sabers, but the Dao Darn or “plum blossom saber”, which appeared during the Song Dynasty (960-1279), can be said to have become a kind of ideal. Moreover, from that time on, neither the Tao nor the direct Chinese sword Yian underwent significant changes until the XNUMXth century. Moreover, over all these hundreds of years, effective techniques for working with the Tao saber have been developed, so its widespread use is not surprising.
Blade tip
At first glance, this type of bladed weapon seems somewhat... decorative, but this is only at first glance. Dao is very well balanced and has a perfect aerodynamic shape, as a result of which it is a very effective (and spectacular in appearance!) weapon.
The sheath of the museum sword is covered with stingray leather, dyed green.
The Dao has a curved handle reminiscent of an 18th century pistol with a massive metal pommel that can be used to strike effectively with the back of the sword. The hand is protected by a massive brass guard. But the biggest feature of this saber is its blade.
Its back side is made blunt along its entire length. Thanks to this, during certain defensive techniques, you can support the blade with your left hand without the risk of cutting yourself on it. The blade is sharpened differently: in the front near the tip it is sharpest, but the lower part is not so sharp, since it is used to repel blows. But blows with this blade are also delivered differently: cutting blows are used against large muscles (for example, on the chest), but chopping blows are used against bones (for example, a blow to the collarbone). True, the current darn-dao, which is used to practice kung fu techniques, has a thinner blade than ancient examples, and therefore is much lighter than its ancestor - the ancient combat saber. By the way, with a length of 80-85 cm and a blade length of 45-50 cm, the dao could weigh up to 2000 g.
Such an image of a sector wheel is a very ancient and multi-valued thing in its essence. So it didn’t appear here by chance!
Ancient Chinese treatises tell us about the tests that famous swordsmen who mastered all the techniques of working with the Tao were subjected to. First of all, it was necessary to cut a copper rod as thick as a thumb. This required both strength and skill, since it was not easy to deliver such a blow without breaking the blade - you needed both a good saber and the correct execution of the technique needed for this. After this, soldiers armed with pikes and halberds were released on the subjects. And if they had to keep a distance from the fencer, then it was considered that he had passed the test.
In China, the Tao saber is associated with the tiger and they say that “the saber is as wild as a tiger,” implying aggressive techniques for using it in battle. The straight sword yian, on the contrary, is associated among the Chinese with the fabulous phoenix bird, since the techniques of working with it are the embodiment of beauty and precision. To a person who correctly performs all the techniques of working with this sword, it seems simply weightless. That is why, by the way, this sword as a weapon in Chinese legends was most often used by women. In addition, the straight sword, unlike the dao, was also a court sword and therefore richly decorated, because it was usually worn by aristocrats. But the daos were the weapons of ordinary soldiers, so these sabers did not have any special decorations, although they always tried to make them of very high quality.
Let's digress for a moment from museum matters and note that curved blades were characteristic only of the East, and were not used at all in Europe. Here, for example, is an illustration in a manuscript from the Jagiellonian Library, dating back to the first quarter of the 16th century, which depicts a duel with Messer-type blades and Hungarian shields with a spike at the end.
Illustration from the book “Gladiatorium fetchbook”, 1435 Jagiellonian Library, Krakow
Known, for example, in Europe was the kriegmesser (“combat knife”) - the largest examples of which had a blade from 80 cm to about 1,35 m. They fought with similar messers, holding them with both hands by the long handle. So it was a special weapon that was usually owned by professional soldiers of the XNUMXth-XNUMXth centuries, such as, for example, landsknechts. The possession of such “knives” is reflected in a number of fencing manuals of the XNUMXth-XNUMXth centuries, including the famous “Wallerstein Code”. Albrecht Durer also depicted them in his engravings, that is, the popularity of this type of weapon in his time was quite high!
Illustration from the Wallerstein Codex. Augsburg University Library, Augsburg
One-and-a-half-handed grandmesser from Flanders or Germany, ca. 1500 Royal Arsenal, Leeds
Swiss schnepfer from 1530. Total length 1015 mm. Blade width 38 mm. Weight 1620. Wallace Collection, London
In Switzerland, by the beginning of the 16th century, a two-handed saber also appeared with a slight bend of an almost meter-long blade, with a characteristic handle with side arches and a crosshair, like a sword.
The typical Indian saber cannot be confused with any other. And one such saber is in the collection of the Penza Regional Museum of Local Lore. A wide blade with many ribs and a characteristically shaped metal handle - this is only found in Indian sabers. Moreover, the convex part in the middle part of the handle of our sample is decorated with flutes, and the crosshairs and pommel are decorated with metal carvings.
Indian saber from the collections of the Penza Museum of Local Lore
A very strange mark on the blade of an Indian saber
The second Indian saber (on the right in the photo) was clearly made by a master who was well acquainted with the weapons of the Muslim East. In fact, this is a hybrid - the handle of a Persian shamshir, but the crosshair is clearly Indian. The Persian saber - shamshir - with a characteristic thin and curved blade for powerful cleaving blows, is also in the museum’s collection and is on the left in the photo. It is a purely cutting weapon, the tip of which is practically useless due to the strong curvature of the blade. The handles of the two sabers are very similar, but their crosshairs are different. By the way, this Persian saber is very similar in appearance to the saber of Prince Pozharsky from the collection of the Kremlin Armory, only our crosshair is intact. It is decorated very simply. However, its value lies not in the finishing, but in the blade - it is clearly made of Damascus steel and has a pattern of wavy lines on the surface.
Persian and Indian sabers
Persian saber blade with Damascus steel pattern
In general, there is a lot of interesting things in the museum. All that remains is to wait until this entire weapons collection ends up not in the storerooms, but in his open exhibition!
Information