A colleague came to me recently for information to win a bet - a friend of his had insisted that khukris are throwing knives which return boomerang-style.
At first I thought he'd easily won the bet and told him so. Khukris are simply too heavy to return like boomerangs, although their shape is superficially similar. Also, I wouldn't like to catch a flying khukri!
To prove the point, I opened the book I was reading at work, Richard
Burton's The Book of the Sword (1883). A rough summery of the book is
that swords, hatchets, spears and knives developed from wooden clubs and throwing sticks. I read on page 39 that "not a few boomerangs cut with the inner edge, the shapes of the blade and the grip making them unhandy in the extreme" (hmmmm) and later that "The boomerang-shape is also perpetuated in the dreaded Kukkri or Gurkha Sword-knife, now used, however, only for hand - to - hand fighting".
[I assume by this last part that he means 'instead of being thrown' as
opposed to 'instead of being used in non-fighting applications']
A quote describes the Libyan cateia as "a species of bat which, when
thrown, flies not far by reason of its weight; but where it strikes it
breaks through with extreme impetus and if it be thrown by a skilful
hand it returns to him who threw it."
Khukris would certainly break through with extreme impetus, but I doubt they would return.
However, despite saying of various Indian throwing sticks that they
"return, as do the true boomerangs, to the thrower"; he has earlier said that the "peculiarity of reversion or back-flight is not generic, even in the true boomerangs, but appertains only to specific forms".
What do y'all think? And has my friend won his bet?
At first I thought he'd easily won the bet and told him so. Khukris are simply too heavy to return like boomerangs, although their shape is superficially similar. Also, I wouldn't like to catch a flying khukri!
To prove the point, I opened the book I was reading at work, Richard
Burton's The Book of the Sword (1883). A rough summery of the book is
that swords, hatchets, spears and knives developed from wooden clubs and throwing sticks. I read on page 39 that "not a few boomerangs cut with the inner edge, the shapes of the blade and the grip making them unhandy in the extreme" (hmmmm) and later that "The boomerang-shape is also perpetuated in the dreaded Kukkri or Gurkha Sword-knife, now used, however, only for hand - to - hand fighting".
[I assume by this last part that he means 'instead of being thrown' as
opposed to 'instead of being used in non-fighting applications']
A quote describes the Libyan cateia as "a species of bat which, when
thrown, flies not far by reason of its weight; but where it strikes it
breaks through with extreme impetus and if it be thrown by a skilful
hand it returns to him who threw it."
Khukris would certainly break through with extreme impetus, but I doubt they would return.
However, despite saying of various Indian throwing sticks that they
"return, as do the true boomerangs, to the thrower"; he has earlier said that the "peculiarity of reversion or back-flight is not generic, even in the true boomerangs, but appertains only to specific forms".
What do y'all think? And has my friend won his bet?
We don't expect much profit, but it would make for some hellacious threads