Jian Sword Buddha

[Philip]

Originally Posted by mariusgmioc

The opinion I posted above is what I learned from a Chinese expert.



So I contacted one of the largest auction houses in Beijing, and one in Hong Kong asking them if they would like to take my swords. They both declined, citing problems with authenticity. So I asked for details and the guy from Beijing (who was also working with a big museum there) explained me what I essentially summarised above.

Yes indeed. The two posts just previous, by Kubur and Kronckew, aptly point out the hazards of relying on "experts". Relying on Chinese auction "experts" has special shortcomings. The antiques collecting and trade in the PRC is a comparatively recent revival after having been decimated by the fanaticism of the Mao years. Destruction of the "Four Olds", including both things and ideas. (Have you seen the movie "The Red Violin"? The China segment of the story is as close to history as cinema can get.) Keep in mind that this is a country with a regime that limits access to knowledge and tries to control the historical narrative.

When I mentioned my decades-long research into this field (others too like early firearms ) it did not involve just looking at pictures and going through catalog cards in museums. It took getting permission to handle all this stuff in person, lots of it, taking a ton of notes and photos. Discussing with curators, and also looking at depiction in period photos, art work, etc. Comparing styles and craftsmanship with that in analogous applied arts of various periods. Working with colleagues who read the lingo a lot better than I, determining in the process that there are such documents as gazetteers, palace inventories, military production specs, and so forth. Getting the "big picture" from the historical narrative -- about trade, conquest, fashion. Looking at developments in fields such as the metalworking and furniture industries going back to Ming times and even before for an insight into raw materials production and procurement. A lot of geek stuff like this. You find out soon that the Boxer Rebellion is not the huge benchmark that most collectors seem to think it is.

Just look at Donald LaRocca's magisterial book on Tibetan arms, Warriors of the Himalayas... Before this was published, the comment from most collectors was, "is there any info to be had about this field?", having known only Stone's Glossary and perhaps Egerton's Handbook of Indian Arms. Think about the amount of digging that Mr LaRocca had to do to pull this off.

There is a Harvard PhD, H H Kang, whose thesis on Korean matchlocks is groundbreaking. Surviving examples of the guns are relatively few, thanks to disarmament of the country by the Japanese and the massive losses of the Korean War. But by means of broad-ranging and thorough research he has come up with an amazing body of info, and I can say from personal correspondence that he isn't done yet.

[kronckew]

Another thought on context; I've read that the Jian was a 'scholars' sword, for their self-defence. Presumably this was a subject they also studied to be effective with it.

...But what else did 'Scholars' study, aside from learning the tens of thousands of characters and combinations of them.

The Chinese Government was based on Confucianism. The system required testing, written and oral exams, not only for entry, but for advancement to the next higher level. If you didn't pass the exam, you stayed at your current level. No rising to your level of incompetence, you stayed at your last level of competence. The study of the Jian was considered to take a lifetime. The Military preferred the Dao, which you learned fast, or died in battle. The Dao was also part of a weapons system with shields, armour, pole arms, artillery, missile weapons, strategy and tactics, not needed by civilians who liked to dance in well regulated patterns, the Dao was for killing, the Jian for showing off.

[JoeCanada42]

Kronckew, I dunno if I would agree, I would argue for fun that the Jian is More deadly. If you were going to encounter a person with any armor at all, picking out a spot and puncturing would probably work better than cutting. the tapered blade makes the jian look more effective at blocking than a saber, the jian has a larger range for defense and a larger amount of movement for attack , it is also double edged. The Jian may need more education and skill which in turn would also make it more deadly, I would say its the smart choice, not showing off. maybe the Dao was more suitable for the militia because as you said it was easier to use etc.

[Philip]

Originally Posted by kronckew

Another thought on context; I've read that the Jian was a 'scholars' sword, for their self-defence. Presumably this was a subject they also studied to be effective with it.

...But what else did 'Scholars' study, aside from learning the tens of thousands of characters and combinations of them.

The Chinese Government was based on Confucianism. The system required testing, written and oral exams, not only for entry, but for advancement to the next higher level. If you didn't pass the exam, you stayed at your current level. No rising to your level of incompetence, you stayed at your last level of competence. The study of the Jian was considered to take a lifetime. The Military preferred the Dao, which you learned fast, or died in battle. The Dao was also part of a weapons system with shields, armour, pole arms, artillery, missile weapons, strategy and tactics, not needed by civilians who liked to dance in well regulated patterns, the Dao was for killing, the Jian for showing off.

Well, the foray into Confucious and the Chinese civil service is quite a stretch, isn't it? What the examination system had to do with the jian and its use isn't exactly clear, but let me think about it.

What this does sound like is the sort of thing I've heard over many years of gun shows, collectors' meetings, and auction previews. Folks taking a bit of knowledge and extrapolating willy-nilly. Have heard earfuls regarding European swords and swordsmanship. People whose only exposure to traditional Western armed combat is Olympic fencing and Hollywood costume dramas expounding on eight centuries of swordplay in Europe. And how the sword in Europe essentially became irrelevant with the steady improvement of firearms. Irrelevant? I would recommend J. C. Amberger's The Secret History of the Sword for its analysis of how the use of cold steel has remained a vital and serious field of study and training down to the 20th cent.

Another case is the understanding of the small-sword in relation to its predecessor, the rapier. It is true that small-swords as part of a diplomat's formal dress and the regalia of the Académie Française are symbolic props, but to dismiss these weapons as fashion statements or "all for show" misses the point that they originated well back into the 17th cent. when swordsmanship was an important skill for civilians of a certain class. And that it is the result of a few decades' worth of transition from the true rapier, which would imply that functional parameters connected with fighting styles were at play. Funny thing, I remember a heated discussion I had with a gent who claimed that the smallsword was not a real weapon, it was only a piece of male attire like cufflinks or a tie-clip. And that European swordfighting techniques couldn't hold a candle to Japanese since in the West, it was mainly a sport and not real combat. Oh, I should mention that the "expert" who was lecturing me was a kendo practitioner (and a weekend duffer, at that). Last I checked, these guys do their thing with fasciculated strips of bamboo, not steel blades. Sport or combat?

[Ian]

Originally Posted by Philip

Well, the foray into Confucious and the Chinese civil service is quite a stretch, isn't it? What the examination system had to do with the jian and its use isn't exactly clear, but let me think about it. ...

Thanks Philip. Much appreciated if you can bring Confucius, the Chinese civil service, and the examination system into focus with regard to the jian and its use. Wayne's comments are a bit "fuzzy" to me.

[mariusgmioc]

Thank you Philip for the very interesting information!

Reading your explanation I remembered another very interesting aspect:

the museums in China have very small collections of Chinese porcelain.

And this is because of two main reasons:
1. throughout the whole history of China, porcelain was a main export product and was exported in massive quantities;
2. during Mao's "Cultural Revolution" porcelain has been considered as a symbol of aristocracy and decadence and was systematically destroyed.

So I was thinking that maybe the "Cultural Revolution" thing may have impacted the jian swords as they also were a symbol of aristocracy.

[Philip]

Originally Posted by mariusgmioc

Thank you Philip for the very interesting information!

Reading your explanation I remembered another very interesting aspect:

the museums in China have very small collections of Chinese porcelain.

And this is because of two main reasons:
1. throughout the whole history of China, porcelain was a main export product and was exported in massive quantities;
2. during Mao's "Cultural Revolution" porcelain has been considered as a symbol of aristocracy and decadence and was systematically destroyed.

So I was thinking that maybe the "Cultural Revolution" thing may have impacted the jian swords as they also were a symbol of aristocracy.

You're most welcome, Marius!

It might be useful to remember also that the anti-aristocratic attitude predates Mao, we see it after the 1911 revolution that toppled the monarchy. Just like in France in 1792 and Russia post-1917. A lot of articles associated with the Manchu rulers were destroyed -- mandarins' uniforms and hats, insignia and flags, official seals, and (sadly) documents that historians would love to have available today.

Mao's Red Guards targeted ALL antiques. That's why the shortages of objects in museums. Antiques dealers and collectors were harassed, arrested, and on occasion sent to camps to be "re-educated". Because antiques collecting was considered a BOURGEOISE habit, and you know how Communists hate that class!

Funny story -- when I spent a month in the USSR in the 1980s, I took some cigars with me to enjoy, not knowing if I could get them there. What a pleasure, puffing on one in the park, or at a café. Some folks stopped to look -- I thought it's because I'm a funny looking guy with a bald head, but no, it was the cigar. Soviet citizens just didn't do cigars. Someone told me that the prejudice was a holdover from old propaganda associating cigar smoking with fat cat capitalists in their expensive suits sitting on bags of ill-gotten money squeezed from the proletariat!

[mariusgmioc]

Cigars you said?!

Was like wearing an infamy badge saying "I'm a bloody capitalist suckling on the blood of the working class"...

[kronckew]

Originally Posted by Philip

...
Some folks stopped to look -- ..., it was the cigar. ...

Probably just because cigars smell really bad.

[Philip]

Originally Posted by Ian

Thanks Philip. Much appreciated if you can bring Confucius, the Chinese civil service, and the examination system into focus with regard to the jian and its use. Wayne's comments are a bit "fuzzy" to me.

Ian, after thinking about it more, I also can't help but find his comments to be, as you say, "fuzzy". There seems to be no clear nexus between the jian and Confucian ideology (essentially a framework governing social structure and political morality) or the governmental structure itself.

Since Wayne does comment on the role of the jian (straight double edged) and the dao (single edged, either straight backsword or curved saber), how about an historical overview to put all this in some sort of developmental context.

1. The first hilt weapon (with longish blade) to hit the scene in China was the sword (jian), made of bronze, first appearing during classical antiquity, during the feudalistic Zhou period prior to unification. It predated the use of long single-edged blades and for awhile it was the only game in town as far as swords went.

2. The backsword, zhibeidao (literally "straight backed knife") came into use towards the end of the Zhou, first in bronze then later in iron and eventually steel. It was used alongside the jian and became increasingly popular during the consolidation and unification of the feudal states into a centralized empire (Qin Dynasty, 3rd cent. BC).

3. During the succeeding Eastern and Western Han Dynasties, which more or less coincided with the late Roman Republic and early Empire, both weapons remained in use, although the backsword gradually became more important in a military role.


4. During the medieval dynasties, both blade types underwent a design change, in terms of hilts and scabbard suspension, influenced by the swords of pre-Islamic Iran, whose culture helped shape that of China in terms of the sciences, cuisine, music and arts (Buddhism also reached China via western Asia from India, also accounting for these cultural linkages). This "new" style Chinese sword mounting was also adopted by the Koreans and Japanese, which explains the considerable outward similarities between 7th-9th cent. swords from Iran, China, and Japan seen at such institutions as the Met and the Shô-sô-in (Nara, Japan).

5. Later in the medieval period, during the Song Dynasties (10th-13th cent.) the jian hilt changed again, to a form not much dissimilar to the familiar shape known today. The backsword continued in its military role but its worth noting that in the 11th cent. military compendium WUJING ZONGYAO the double edged sword is listed as one of the close-combat hilt weapons as well.

6. The saber (peidao) with its CURVED single edged blade, makes its debut on a large scale during the short-lived Mongol Dynasty (13th-14th cent.). From the researches by Kyrill Rivkin et al, we are all no doubt familiar with origins of the saber among Eurasian steppe nomad cultures, and its spread to surrounding "sedentary" agricultural- and commercially-based states by way of the migration and conquests of Inner Asian peoples from the Avars to the Timurids.

7. By the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) the saber gained in importance in the military, and the backsword declined and practically disappeared (surviving only in the Himalayan kingdoms of Tibet and Bhutan, and to a limited extent in Korea). The jian increasingly became a civilian weapon, somewhat analogous to the rapier in Europe at about the same time.

8. This pattern of use continued into the last imperial dynasty, the Qing (Manchu) , 1644-1911. Manchu guards officers were known to practice with the jian for sport, and commoners in the more unsettled provinces and districts of the empire carried short-bladed jian for self-defense or more nefarious purposes according to local gazetteers and official documents of the era. The Kangxi emperor (r 1682-1722) had to deal with complaints from provincial officials about armed civilians causing mischief with various weapons, but his memoirs indicate that trying to disarm them was probably more trouble than it was worth since as foreign interlopers, the Manchus were wary of discontented subjects being goaded into rebellion.

A survey of the considerable numbers of jian in museum collections, and of the historical literature, can tell us something about the usage of these weapons, as correlated to their design.
A. There are a number of blade configurations from various periods that point to distinct functional parameters -- Long, narrow, thick, and notably tapered blades, almost reminiscent of rapiers though without the extreme length, popular during the Yuan and Ming Dynasties. Somewhat broader cut-and-thrust blades with fairly aggressive distal taper. Slightly narrower ones with more obtuse edge geometry. We do know that there were a number of fencing styles taught during the late imperial period, and there is probably a correlation.

B. Distinct forms of blades and hilts were reserved for ritual or votive swords connected with popular Taoist practice. The blades are typically inlaid with emblems and inscriptions not found in weapons in Group A. The religious significance of the double-edged sword is also strong in Buddhism, and nowhere is this more apparent than in neighboring Japan, where the ken has been reserved for use as temple regalia, often lavishly mounted in very Indic or Tantric-inspired motifs

C. Touristic curios, widely produced during the end of the Qing through the pre-WW II years, which are non-functional (blades often not tempered), gaudily decorated in stereotypical designs.

D. Equally non-functional but plainer versions made for exercise, beginning in the early years of the Republic, to go along with a revival of traditional martial skills like boxing and archery. This degenerated into the showy "wushu" techniques promoted by the Communist regime after 1949.