Although stylistic issues are important for understanding individual cultures and reconstructing their interactions, for military history purposes it may be said that in China the sword gradually evolved from a fairly blunt, extremely short dagger with a minimally defined handle to a more dynamically contoured, elongated blade-and-hilt combination that was molded as a single unit from various bronze alloys. However, just as with the axe, evolutionary changes are often obscured by the deliberate continuation of previous styles. Whether because bronze weapons were expensive or because inherent conservatism stifled military innovation, daggers from previous generations continued to be esteemed, preserved, and employed,
19
often manufactured from laboriously produced old stone molds. Considerable incentive must have been required to discard functional weapons or consign them to the smelter for reprocessing.
Moreover, although not directly relevant to the Shang, with the onset of the late Spring and Autumn period and the general practice of prominently wearing daggers in court and on the battlefield, swords came to be valued in themselves and the basis of a growing mystique. Some men became known in the Warring States for their skill in appraising not only the martial qualities of contemporary and antique
swords, but also their auspiciousness, just like the experts who evaluated horses or physiognomized men. Fragments of books that discuss their essential principles have recently been recovered from Han dynasty border sites in Gansu and elsewhere, attesting to a widespread interest in the practice of evaluating weapons, particularly in dangerous areas, that may well have originated in the Shang.
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These daggers or short swords were merely ancillary weapons for self-protection, never the primary choice for close encounters. Unlike in Greece and Rome, ancient Chinese warriors did not fight with swords and shields, slashing and hacking away at each other in open combat, but employed intermediate-range weapons—the dagger-axe and the short spear—and only resorted to their daggers when they failed to prevent the enemy from closing or they lost their primary weapon. This is well attested by individual burials from the Shang through the Spring and Autumn, which, when they contain any weapons at all, generally pair a long weapon with a dagger.
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A late Spring and Autumn tomb pictograph of riverine combat that portrays shipboard warriors wielding a variety of long weapons clearly shows that although many also carried short swords, they remained fastened to their waists.
As noted, based on their design it has been claimed that the earliest daggers were probably intended to function primarily, if not exclusively, as thrusting weapons, even though the traditional Chinese term “short swords” implies that they were used for slashing and cutting as well as penetrating and piercing. However, throughout history warriors have managed to use weapons in surprising ways, and virtually every weapon can be employed in inefficient but still functional modes. Moreover, when present-day knife-fighting methods are examined, it is obvious that military knives and stiletto-type weapons are frequently used for slashing and that slashing movements are often employed to create opportunities for piercing strikes. Without doubt these early daggers could have been used to sever a limb or slash the neck, even though such movements would require changing the mode of attack from forwardly directed thrusts to more circular swipes.
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However, further evidence that in antiquity the dagger was conceived primarily as a thrusting weapon may be seen in the absence of the sort of perpendicular guard that would be necessary between the blade and hilt to protect the hand
against a slashing blow sliding down a blade’s length, as well as a concern with thickening the middle of the blade and sharpening both edges along their entire length.
In at least a few peripheral cultures, the dagger apparently enjoyed a secondary use as a throwing weapon. This is attested by later literary references in the
Hou Han-shu
and other works and further suggested by the unusual practice of wearing a double scabbard in both the northwest and southwest. This custom naturally suggests that either warriors fought with two daggers simultaneously or, as indicated by recorded incidents, resorted to throwing them, presumably as a surprise tactic since the technique would be more effective if unexpected and unobserved. The act of throwing would have been facilitated by the handle’s length, which was often nearly half that of the entire dagger, though the necessary balance could also have been achieved by increasing the weight of the hilt with a slightly larger, solid handle or adding a pommel, whether a simple thick knob or the sort of decorative figure frequently seen.
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The first stabbing or piercing weapons in the Chinese environs are slender, ill-defined “stickers” that in many instances might be more appropriately termed awls or bodkins than daggers. Fashioned from a single piece of stone or bone but occasionally inserted into a bone or wooden handle, they date back to the Neolithic.
24
Although they proliferated in the third millennium BCE, being common in the upper reaches of the Yellow River in the Ma-chiao-yao culture, stone and bone combinations may also be found as early as 6000 BCE in the northeast.
25
Lengths for these early
pi-shou
—
pi
originally meaning “ladle” or “arrowhead,” though
pi-shou
now means “dagger” or “stiletto”—run from about 18 to 35 centimeters, but slightly greater dimensions sometimes appear in Hsia stone variants.
Just like knives, other areas outside China’s cultural core possessed daggerlike, edged metal weapons long before the Shang, and the absence of the sword in the Shang and early Western Chou, despite apparent nonmetal and metal precursors from early sites, has led to assertions that China imported the sword from them rather than originated it.
26
However, not all scholars agree that the core Hua-hsia cultural area lacked discernible precursors or that there is any causal connection between
the sequenced appearance of northern and Shang types, particularly in the light of the preexistence of dagger-axe and spearhead blades.
27
Moreover, even if it were largely true that the sword was imported, few battlefield implications would be entailed because the steppe people did not possess swords of any appreciable length or employ their daggers in any distinctive or more efficient fighting mode, and Shang dagger-axes and spears would have easily outranged them.
Nevertheless, several Chinese forms visible by the early Western Chou, if not earlier, have been identified with the Northern complex and the northeast, though there are claims that other regions such as the southwest (Pa and Shu) were the inception point. The Northern cultural complex—which was once viewed as sweeping almost virtually unbroken across the broad area just north of a line demarcating various ancient walls and the future Great Wall from Gansu and even Xinjiang in the west through Inner Mongolia, the northern parts of Shaanxi, Shanxi, Hebei, and Liaoning out onto the Korean peninsula—is now perceived as roughly divisible into two areas of influence, the northern zone and the northeast.
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However, archaeological reports indicate that their nebulous border (which apparently fell somewhat north of the T’ai-hang Mountains) must have been extremely porous because what might be considered definitive weapons are frequently recovered in alien areas, whether as a result of gift giving, trade, or seizure.
The northern zone is clearly the more important of these two, because interaction with the Shang resulted in the early exchange of various bronze objects, including the dagger.
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As already discussed, Erh-li-kang culture expanded along the Yellow River and T’ai-hang Mountains into the north and westward into the Wei river valley before being forced to retrench about the time the capital was established at Anyang, presumably due to a combination of Shang internal weakness and the growing strength of peripheral peoples. Although early Shang ritual bronzes penetrated all these regions, two specialized northern weapons, daggers and knives, intruded into Shang culture and apparently were deliberately copied, no bronze daggers with integral handles or similar-style knives having ever been recovered from the Erh-li-kang phase of Shang culture. Two styles of dagger were widespread in the north: one very similar to contemporary military or commando knives
(such as the Fairbarn), characterized by a visibly protruding, somewhat circular spine, and the other marked by distinctive, often fancy pommels featuring animal heads and an essentially rhomboidal cross-section.
30
In contrast, the daggers recovered in the northeast, particularly beyond Beijing (which was a sort of pivotal area between the cultures of the northeast, south, and plains), out through Liaoning and in a few cases even down to Shandong, are often marked by a highly unusual appearance, something like a violin or Chinese gourd, created by two wavy bulges protruding from the blade’s length.
31
How this dagger was conceived or could have ever been considered a functional weapon remains unclear, especially since the tips of many specimens are so rounded as to be incapable of penetrating the slightest thickness of material. Moreover, the second or larger bulge near the hilt, though certainly enlarging a wound opening, would have encountered increased resistance, thus minimizing any unknown advantages it may have possessed over a more dynamically tapered weapon. (This style didn’t really influence China until the middle to late Western Chou, roughly the ninth century BCE, when it spread across the north over the next two centuries but then suddenly disappeared late in the Warring States period.)
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Apart from their often complex hilts and pommels, the key feature of daggers was the incorporation of a circular or rodlike spine instead of a flattened or rhomboidal cross-section. This core portion essentially continued down to form an integral, basically circular handle differentiated solely by a minimal hand guard. Despite numerous variations in size and style, overall dimensions in the late Western Chou were still only 31 to 32 centimeters in length and 4.4 to 5.9 centimeters in width, numbers that provide a comparative maximum for earlier Shang achievements. Apart from a slight expansion at the bottom of the handle to insert a staff, at this point many daggers looked exactly like spearheads. However, they would gradually become longer and slimmer in the Spring and Autumn period, with representative samples running 27 to 34 centimeters in length, with less bulbous but still quite expansive widths of 4.6 to 5.1 centimeters.
33
As already mentioned, in the absence of indigenous Erh-li-kang precursors, foreign origins have been sought for the dagger’s sudden appearance in an already fairly advanced, well-contoured form. The preponderance of evidence suggests a fundamental northern influence,
yet the number of recognized exceptions continues to increase. For example, a highly unusual, so-called Snake Head Seven Star Sword, which has an overall length of 53 centimeters, a width of 4.5 centimeters, and a minimal hand guard with reverse points obviously designed to catch an enemy blade, has been dated to the Shang.
34
Another distinctive, fully formed Shang weapon, marked by a raised broad spine that ends in an oval handle and with an overall length of 29.4 centimeters, including a 22-centimeter blade, a width of 4 centimeters, and a thickness of 0.5 centimeter, has been recovered in Shandong, an area that would subsequently see the importation of the wavy blade style.
35
Other than these exceptions, the earliest bronze daggers associated with the Shang dynasty are quite simple, generally having a “willow leaf” appearance. The first dagger of this type, recovered from Ch’ang-an Chang-chia-p’o, is a mere 27 centimeters in total length, including the 18-centimeter edged blade, and has a rhomboidal profile.
36
Having been dated to the eleventh century BCE, it is now identified with the late Shang rather than the Western Chou, its previous attribution.
37
The tab’s profile required it to be inserted into a wooden handle and then secured with a nail or peg through a premolded hole. This sort of tapered tab would invariably fail over time as the metal acted against the wood, enlarging the original opening and producing a tendency to wobble in the handle. Thus it is not surprising that one of the first technical improvements witnessed in the early Western Chou would be to change the dagger’s design, no doubt in imitation of northern styles, to include a continuously molded handle which, having a fairly small diameter, could be gripped securely with the addition of cord wrapping or wooden slats.
Thereafter the sword would witness innumerable changes in the width, length, contours, general profile, edged portions, and cross-section of the blade, some undoubtedly stimulated by the unremitting quest for longer, sharper, and more durable swords with a secure grip, but others of less certain origin. Many of the changes being very subtle and never experimentally investigated, their likely effects can only be speculated upon within a historical context. However, when the myriad variations and stylistic changes are winnowed out, one basic shape, consisting of a unitary molded handle and elongated blade, can be said to have eventually predominated, although earlier versions, stylistic variations, and different lengths always continued to coexist.
17.
THE
KO
OR DAGGER-AXE
T
HE DAGGER-AXE OR
ko
, a weapon unique to China, was originally designed to pierce the neck and upper body and thereby maim or slay by cutting and severing, rather than inflicting the sort of crushing injuries caused by shock weapons. Even in its earliest form the point was fully capable of penetrating the era’s scanty armor and disabling the victim. Moreover, just as depicted by oracular characters and later tomb pictorials, before the lengthened shaft of subsequent eras came to require two hands, the short, single-handed versions common in the Shang were certainly used in conjunction with a shield.
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