Dear Folks:

I apologize in advance as I am unable to locate the original citation for this comment. It may have even been on CHF but I have been unable to relocate it. All the same please consider my question.

I remember that there had been mention that over the generations the use of the Chinese straight sword ("jian") had become highly sophisticated. Apparently, the problem arose that the level of sophistication in method made it difficult to train the common foot-soldier in the use of the Jian within a narrowly-defined period of time. The result seems to have been presented that during, or after, the Han Dynasty, officers continued to carry jian while foot soldiers were trained in Dao. In time, the officers also accepted the use of the dao architecture and the Jian became the weapon of scholars and bureaucrats as were as the "daily carry" for personal self-defense.

As a scholar I like to be able to substantiate things I run across but I have not been able to find a resource to support this position. If someone could direct me to a resource I would be very much appreciative. To date I don't know of anyone who has found documentations supporting the abandonment of the jian for the dao among Chinese soldiers of old. Thoughts?

Best Wishes,

Bruce

The 'quick training' theory has been mentioned on CHF for ease of use of the dao over the jian, and perhaps it may contribute a little to the prominence of the dao in the Han period and after. It is not the primary reason IMO.
I have thought rather a lot about the Han dao design, and there is another reason (as given by Cheng & Dong in 'Ancient Chinese Weapons') and this is the increasing prominence of cavalry in the Han period. Chariots disapear, and with the the hooking ge halberd. The % of cavalry in Han armies is much greater than the % in the Qin buried army for example.
The use of a dao, the straight edged sabre, is suited to horseback and slashing in an arc. Han art depicts these swords being carried by horsemen on a number of occasions.

There is also the infantry dao shown in art, and a range of sizes, which means Cheng & Dong simplify the reasons too much just like a 'training' hypothesis.

My main feeling is that the quality of steel in the Han, the improvements contemporaneous with this change to the dao, contribute a lot. Yang Hong also in his book 'Ancient Chinese weapons' considers the dao the primary weapon of the period rather than the jian.
I should however correct the thread title. The jian was never 'abandoned'. It was always used, and the form persists long after the ring pommeled type of dao vanishes. Both short jian and more still the long jian can still be found in the Han period in quite some numbers.

Jeroen of swordforum mentioned recently, and he has first hand knowledge, that the length of iron swords is because making/forging a long iron sword is not much harder than making a short one. With casting bronze the difficulty is increased with length due to the requirments of temperature and metal flow through the mold. There are other reasons too that bronze is not quite as practical for long weapons. The weight 1 ti 1 with iron and the chance of flaws along the length.
To return to the topic, when steel appears and in the Han is refined the longer blades become the main type.
With a long jian of 1m or more wielding it to thrust is much more difficult, a long sword is better suited for slashing. A short sword is quick to thrust but something more than twice as heavy and balanced further from the hilt means slashing is superior for the 120cm sword.
When swords were of great length they would mostly be used to slash, and here is why a dao is better suited.
The cross section of Han dao focuses ALL onto a blade edge strength. It is weak in a thrust.
There is no crossgaurd so stabbing risks the hand slipping up the blade. The ring pommel allows a lanyard for the wrist and also prevents the sword slipping out the hand from its mass while striking.
A 1m+ jian if used to slash is perhaps more versatile but is not adapted 100% to slash in the same way. The blade is not as strong for the mass due to the cross section.
The Han dao is well suited to its task, given the length of swords being produced the factors of specialisation & cavalry & training all would mean together the long dao would find prominence over the long jian at this time.



PS; here is a bronze Han ring pommeled dao of 70cm. Probably 2nd century BC and much longer than most bronze swords. I will be adding more pictures and updating my Han dao thread later. Steel dao are longer but seldom preserve so well. At this time (early West Han) bronze is made long to compete with the larger steel swords. Once steel was fully mastered by Han Chinese bronze is dispensed with.
The cross section, unique to such dao, can be seen on the Han dao thread; http://www.chinahistoryforum.com/index.php?showtopic=7440
The fragment from that is shown here for comparison also.
Compare to an I beam in a steel building support, the outer surface area for mass is greater and so it makes a stronger blade for a slash.


BTW, the sabre above looks much the same as the sabre in the British museum on the link I gave.

The pommel has silk thread mineralised on it from contact in the tomb {seen here just barely as a pattern...when examined at 70x the silk strands can be seen in a weave}, this was the only bare bronze on the sword when buried to preserve the covering.
Fabric on the handle is {not shown} visible at 70x magnification at tiny points & wood grain alignment can be seen imprinted in silt on the blade from a scabbard that decayed long ago.

The Dao not only seem to be fit more for cavalry(who needs a longer reach), but for infantry who fights cavalry. The typically shorter Jian is a great stabbing weapon against other infantry, but against cavalry the rider is all the way up there. Sure, you could make the Jian longer to stab the rider, but then what would the spear and Ji be for? There is also a ongoing theory in this forum of how Han lamellar is more vulnerable to a slash then a stab(and thus the switch). Can anyone go into detail about this?

I don't think I ever found any recorded reason for the switch, everything is just personal speculation, but if anyone does be sure to tell me.

Another common hypothesis that the use of the Jian while mounted would prove disastrous should the user attempt to run the foe through- it was quite likely that the force of the impact would carry the stabber off the horse too.

As for recorded explanation, I don't believe I've seen that either.

Great post and great pictures, btw, Kenneth.

infantry attacking cavalry with a dao though, wouldn't their main weapon be a spear?

The ji halberd is a long hafted pole weapon that also comes prominent in the Han period. It may be more suited to fighting cavalry again. One scene in Han art shows one rider pulling another rider from the horse with a ji halberd (Cheng & Dong) so it was used from foot and mount.
It would be ideal against cavalry for an infantryman and combines the ge and spear. Earlier versions of ji were typically '2' weapons combined instead of a single attachment.
I have one late East Zhou ji, cast as a spear but with a ge hook too, and this is a pretty rare piece in this arrangement since most were just ge with a seperate spear atop.
I should post this too in time.

Here is a ji, a bronze version. This is what the Han adopted, a type that appeared only late in the Warring States period.
Iron ones could again be larger. This is the halberd form that replaced the ge halberd.


Seen here is a Han ji second from right, a Han tsah on the right, a late East Zhou ge left, and an archiac style ge (or sometimes called a 'ko' hook.) on the top.
This shows the 3 broad styles of ancient halberd. The tsah is a very rare item.
BTW The East Zhou ge had a character on it, 'valley' IIRC and it looked like an authentic inscription rather than an addition.

Here are Han infantry, again. Dao & Ji being distinctly Han weapons.



These three bronze dao show variations. The long versions are the 'normal' appearance.
The middle one is more robust & heavier for size, while the long dao are very very thin cast bronze.
The smaller one notably has a crossgaurd, which I suspect may be an earlier feature that may have been dropped quite quickly.
The only other dao I have seen with a gaurd like this was also bronze, and so I suspect it may also have been only partly evolved into the final simplified design that carries down though the Age of Fragmentation. That is my theory anyway. Without a contextual dating I cannot be sure, but crossgaurds are not represented in post-Han versions.
Such rare swords may be an intermediate form as I have not yet seen one in a steel dao.

why did infantry move towards no protection at all in later eras? Does it have to do with the abilities of the weapons?

I d like to say, yes.

Arsenal development might be more problematical than other things. When a kind of weapon is not suitable anymore in the battle field, it is replaced. Like the obsolete Jian and later the heavy armor, the sight difference is Jian is not totally out, it is a favor of scholars and bureaucrats, and sometime a useful weapon for self-defense.