Chapter 4 The second quarter body weapon

Military strategists often refer to such weapons as "short weapons (arms)".The main products are short-handled knives with single-sided side blades and swords with blades on both sides and sharp front ends.Consisting of blade, sword body and short handle, it is mostly used for close combat and body defense. A short-handled knife is a single-edged self-defense weapon used for chopping.It evolved from stone knives and bone knives in the late Neolithic age.After the appearance and continuous improvement of bronze smelting technology, people began to cast and use bronze knives as tools.In the Shang Dynasty, due to the further improvement of bronze smelting and casting technology, three types of bronze knives with straight ridges and thin blades, curved ridges and thin blades, and upturned blades were produced.Because the lethal effect of knives is not as good as that of spears and other straight-piercing and horizontal pecking weapons, they are less manufactured and used, and they are not widely equipped with troops. This situation has not changed until the Qin Dynasty.During the Western Han Dynasty, steel ring-shou knives began to appear, with thick ridges and thin blades, straight blades and short handles, and were called "ring-shou knives" because of the ring at the end of the handle.Unearthed from the tomb of Liu Sheng in the Western Han Dynasty in Mancheng County, Hebei Province, there was a ring head knife worn by officials. The ring head was wrapped in gold and covered with an exquisite lacquer sheath.

During the Eastern Han Dynasty, the manufacturing level of steel knives increased.When making knives, the number of repeated folding and forging (called lian or lian [lian] at that time) knife blanks increased day by day, so that there were 30 lian, 50 lian, and 100 lian steel knives.Cangshan County, Shandong Province once collected a ring head knife in July 1974, with a total length of 111.5 cm, a width of 3 cm, and a ridge thickness of 1 cm.The head of the ring is oval.There are 15 characters on the body of the knife, including the inscription in the official script of gold: "Thirty-five big swords and auspicious sheep made in May Bingwu, the sixth year of Yongchu".It can be seen that this knife is a 30th steel-making knife made in 112 AD."May Bingwu" in the inscription is the Duanyang Festival on the fifth day of May.According to the ancient theory of yin and yang and five elements, this day is a yang day, the best time to smelt metals. In 1964, a steel knife was found in the ancient tomb of Todaiji Temple in Yamato Shuomoto, Japan, engraved with the words "Zhongping" and "Hailian Qinggang" in the Eastern Han Dynasty.It shows that this knife is a "Bailian Qinggang (Hailian Refined Steel)" knife made between 184 and 189 AD.

By the Three Kingdoms and Jin Dynasties, it was common practice to cast precious swords.During the Jian'an period, Cao Cao invited famous masters to make five precious swords in three years.His son Cao Zhi wrote "Ode to the Precious Sword" and praised his sword's ability to "cut rhinoceros leather by land and dragon boat by water".The Lord of Wu, Sun Quan, personally supervised the making of the three precious swords that he carried with him, namely Bailian, Qingdu and Loujing.Pu Yuan, a famous knife maker in the Shu Kingdom, has a deep knowledge of the quenching technology of steel knives, and can identify weapons quenched with different water qualities.It is said that once, Pu Yuan cast 3000 knives for Zhuge Liang in Xiegu.When casting knives, he adopted a unique quenching method, and specially sent people to quench them with water from the Shu River.A person who fetched water accidentally overturned a lot of water from the Shu River, so he took water from the Fujiang River to make up for it, hoping to get away with it.Unexpectedly, when Pu Yuan put the cast knife into the water to quench it, he said that it was not the water of Shu River.The water-taker wants to quibble.Pu Yuan said that the water was mixed with eight liters of other water, why didn't you tell the truth.The person who fetched the water knew that he couldn't hide it, so he told the truth.Pu Yuan switched to quenching with water from the Shu River, and the knife was so sharp that it was called the "magic knife".

During the Sui and Tang Dynasties, short-handled horizontal knives were mostly used in the army.Song Jun mostly used short-handled hand knives.The Yuan army used short-handled ring knives.The Ming army used three types of short-handled knives: short knives, waist knives, and imitation Japanese long knives.There are more types of short-handled knives used by the Qing army. A sword is a straight double-edged sharp weapon used for stabbing.Consists of a blade and a hilt.The body of the sword is slender, with edges on both sides and a ridge in the middle, narrow at the front and wide at the back, and a short handle with a ring at the back. carry.

The unearthed objects show that the early sword is a willow-leaf-shaped bronze sword used in the early Western Zhou Dynasty. It has no ridge in the middle, lacks the sword frame and sword head, only has a short stem, and its structure is not yet perfect.Since then, it has been gradually improved. There is a ridge in the center of the sword body, the sword stem is lengthened into a handle, and the sword frame and sword head are added. The structure of the sword is basically finalized. During the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, the sword-making industry in the southern countries of Wu, Yue, and Chu was quite developed, and a group of mythical and legendary swordsmiths such as Ou Yezi, Feng Huzi, Gan Jiang, and Mo Xie emerged. It is said that the king of Chu once sent Feng Huzi to Wu. The state invited Ou Yezi and Gan Jiang to make swords, and as a result, three famous swords were produced: Longyuan, Tai'a (also known as Tai'a), and Gongbu.It is also said that Ou Yezi also made five rare swords that cut iron like mud, including Zhanlu, Chunjun, Shengxie, Yuchang, and Juque, for Goujian, the king of Yue.During the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, many bronze swords made by Wu Yue and other vassal states have been unearthed in recent years.From the inscriptions on the swords, it can be seen that among them are three swords of King Wu's lightsaber, two swords of Fuchai of King Wu, one sword of Goujian of King Yue, and one sword of Zhu Gou of King Yue.Most of them are manufactured with exquisite workmanship, and the sword grid is embedded with precious stones. It still has a special luster and is extremely sharp, and the inscriptions in gold are still clearly visible.The excavation of these swords and the content of their inscriptions can show that the records in historical documents such as "Wuyue Chunqiu" and "Yuejueshu" are not all fictions, but some exaggerated reflections of the actual sword-making at that time.

A bronze sword with a length of 94 cm unearthed from the Terracotta Warriors and Horses Pit of Qin Shihuang has been treated with anti-corrosion treatment on the surface, and it is the bronze sword with the highest production level. Since the appearance of iron swords in the late Western Zhou Dynasty, the manufacture and use of iron swords has gradually increased.An iron sword was unearthed from the Chunqiu Chu tomb in Changsha City, Hunan Province. After testing, it was made of medium-carbon steel with 0.5% carbon content and was forged 719 times. The blade is longer than the bronze sword.According to historical records, some legendary swordsmiths during the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods not only forged many famous bronze swords, but also forged steel swords.According to Lu Guangwei, a person of the Tang Dynasty, recorded in "Records of Wudi·Carpenter's Gate": When King Helu of Wu ordered his generals to forge steel swords in the craftsman's gate, the iron juice could not flow out.Mo Xie, the general's wife, asked what to do.Gan Jiang said that in the past when Ou Yezi was casting swords, he used a woman to match the furnace god.When Mo Xie heard about it, he jumped into the furnace, and the iron juice suddenly flowed out, casting two swords, male and female, the male sword was named Ganjiang, and the female sword was named Moxie.The general hides his female sword and presents his male sword to the king of Wu. The female sword often screams because he misses the male sword.Later generations often use Gan Jiang and Mo Xie as common names for swords.Although these beautiful and moving legends are exaggerated, they also vividly reflect the general situation of the developed sword-making industry in Wuyue and other countries at that time.Due to the prosperity of the sword-making industry in these vassal states, the sword has become a sharp weapon in the hands of the infantry of these countries.The steel swords in the Western Han Dynasty were already very sharp. In 1978, a steel sword made in the second year of Jianchu of the Eastern Han Dynasty (AD 77) was unearthed in Tongshan County, Xuzhou City, Jiangsu Province, with a total length of 109 cm and a blade length of 88.5 cm.On the front of the hilt, there is an inscription in official script in wrong gold: "In the second year of Jianchu, the Xigong official of Shu County, Wang Min, made fifty 湅□□□Sun Jian□." According to the archaeological department's identification, this sword is made of fried steel with high carbon content. , after repeated forging, reflects the superb smelting and sword-casting level of Shu County in the Eastern Han Dynasty.From the Tang and Song dynasties to the Ming and Qing dynasties, swords had become accessories worn by civil and military officials.

The dagger is a dual-purpose weapon that is mainly used for stabbing and slashing.It is a special body weapon.Consisting of a short handle and a short blade, the structure is similar to a sword but shorter, and is mostly used as a melee guard.In the late Neolithic Age in my country, short-handled bone daggers and stone daggers have been made by grinding methods.A short-handled bone dagger unearthed from the Dawenkou cultural site is 18 cm long and flat and triangular in shape. There is a raised ridge in the center of one side, and sharp edges are sharpened on both sides, which gather forward to form a front. Large square hole, easy to carry with a rope.Because the dagger is short and sharp and easy to hide, it was often used by the ancients as a sharp weapon for assassination.During the Warring States Period, the warrior Jing Ke hid his dagger in the map of Yan State in order to repay the kindness of Prince Dan of Yan State.King Qin showed the map, and when the dagger was about to be revealed, Jing Ke stabbed King Qin with the dagger.Although the assassination was unsuccessful, "seeing the poor with a dagger" has become an idiom allusion that has been handed down to this day.In order to improve the stabbing effect of the dagger, people often apply poison to its blade.