For someone familiar with Chinese military history.

Can somebody tell me what the ethnic Chinese names of the two swords on the left hand side of this picture are called, if there are specific names at all?

https://img488.imageshack.us/img488/...weaponsyn1.jpg

Thanks.

The sword on the left seems to date from the Spring and Autumn Period(722BC-481BC). A Chinese sword is called a Jian.

This is the famous Sword of Goujian. A famous king in the Spring and Autumn period. It's one of the best preserved Sword in history.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...an_s_sword.jpg

Like Cicero said, it's your basic Jian .. which is.. the sword in Chinese :P this type is basically the design from the very early history ( Xia/ Shang dynaties) to the early parts of the Han dynasty, though it was more prevelent in the later parts of the Zhou Dynasty, aka the Spring and Autumn period + Warring states. they were the basic sidearms .

the Dao (saber) replaced it as a military weapon towards the late warring states period and the Jian became more of a self defense / martial arts weapon. and it changed according to that, becoming more light / long with ever better scabbard designs. where as these military versions were much more like a Roman Gladius.

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Originally Posted by RollingWave

Like Cicero said, it's your basic Jian .. which is.. the sword in Chinese :P this type is basically the design from the very early history ( Xia/ Shang dynaties) to the early parts of the Han dynasty, though it was more prevelent in the later parts of the Zhou Dynasty, aka the Spring and Autumn period + Warring states. they were the basic sidearms .

the Dao (saber) replaced it as a military weapon towards the late warring states period and the Jian became more of a self defense / martial arts weapon. and it changed according to that, becoming more light / long with ever better scabbard designs. where as these military versions were much more like a Roman Gladius.

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Actually, that's too much of a generalization. The straight sword (jian), had two variants, the wenjian (scholar's sword, for self defense), and the wujian (warrior's sword, for well...war). The saber (dao), became a popular weapon in China due to its ability to cut, and due to Turkic influence.

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Originally Posted by DemonArchangel

..... The saber (dao), became a popular weapon in China due to its ability to cut, and due to Turkic influence.

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Are you sure on the Turkic influnce, The earliest Dao dates from the Shang dynasty (which was thousands of years ago before China had any contacts with the west), it became popular in the Han dysnasty because it was better at chopping than Jian.

I am speaking in military term, the jian was almost never used practically in war after the early Han period. some officers might carry it but no armies arm themself with jian by design. yes the commoners continued to use it as self defense weapons after that. but we're talking about military here ;) ... and we're also only talking about 1 handed swords, as 2 handers did see some actions.

I don't recall any Daos from the Shang, from what I could remember most sources points to the late warring states as the time to when the dao first really showed up, and it coincided greatly with the development of cavalries. (as the Chinese had used Chariots before the later half of the Zhou, and because you could actually stand effectively on a chariot their long polearm were more effective than a one handed weapon.

The Chinese dao in the begining wasn't really influenced by the turks, they learned cavalry from contacts with the Huns (who are turkish people i suppose) but the design of the dao came as a result of using cavs, not because they actually gotten it from the Huns themself.

the earliest version were strait backs, the turkish influenced version were more curved. the curved versions became more apparent after the Han dynasty, by the Ming dynasty they also designed replica of Japanese nodachi katanas for military use.

http://chineseswords.freewebspace.com/about.html
has a pretty good run down, and also very good pics of actual artifects.