Of bolo rush & bolomen

[migueldiaz]

Originally Posted by KuKulzA28

It's interesting when people, even historians and martial artists, make blanket statements like "Talibon were only weapons" or "all Filipino weaponry had a duality of purpose - war and work" or "weapons are an extension of the hand" or "all bladed techniques can have hand and stick techniques derived from them"etc.etc. From life-experience it seems thing aren't always so clear-cut

I definitely agree that more often, things are not clear-cut.

In a spectrum where one extreme is "tool-only" and the other is "weapon-only", I think most ethnic blades would lie somewhere in between.

Occasionally you'll have the kampilan, etc. that's a weapon-only blade. At the moment I cannot think of a (Filipino) tool-only blade but I'm sure there's one.

But as you also said, the vast majority of ethnic blades would lie somewhere in between. And apparently that's true for the Samar-Leyte sundang as well.

Even the sinister-looking northern Luzon head-axe for instance, is used more often as a tool, rather than to smite an enemy, as noted earlier ...

Originally Posted by KuKulzA28

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That's my family-name: Tseng, I am what's known as Huh-lwo, Hoklo, or Hokkien. I have the Chinese character and Aboriginal symbols to show my mixed ancestry ... ----what does yours mean?

Thanks for sharing the meaning of the uber-cool avatar of yours!

The script in my avatar harks back to my family history. The characters mean "tamer of the serpent bakunawa, protector of the seas, and rider of the storm". Ok, ok, I just made that up! As Dimasalang explained, it's the ancient Philippine script (and the characters refer to my real name's initials).

And said alibata script can still be found occasionally in old Philippine swords (e.g. below).