I recently got into a discussion with a friend who trains with the Chinese jian/gim. I drew a paralell between the blade geometry of the Jian -which typically has a diamond cross section with a central ridge- and that of sturdy Eurpean swords made to penetrate armor like the Type XV or the XVIII. My friend then commented that the Jian for the most part wasn't much of a anti-armor weapon. In fact, once the dao replaced it as the battlefield sword, it turned into a light dueling sword. Mostly there would have been no armour involved.

I now pointed out that early jian seemed to have a lot in common with early European swords like the Spatha. But then, during the migration era, they started putting fullers on the swords which then seems to have been the norm all the way to the indroduction of plate armour. I've also seen plenty of fullers on other Chinese swords, so they must have known about them. The jian, however, seems to have skipped the fuller phase altogether. The only jian I've seen that was an exception had double fullers and retained the central spine between them.

At this point my friend asked "So, why is that, anyway?" And I found I could not give a satisfying answer. I figure there should be some reasoning behind keeping the basic blade geometry practically the same for hundreds of years, but I'm not exactly an expert on Chinese swords.

So, any insight on this matter would be very appriciated. And feel free to correct me if I'm wrong about anything. Like I said, this is rather unknown territory for me.

The jian is a cut and thrust sword. It has almost to no taper and very little distal taper.
The effect is that it can strike with a lot of weight behind it and cut very effectively with the tip yet is still nible enough to thrust.
The weapon can thus be used by both lesser skilled militia and martial artists. There is an account of a chinese master with his jian winning three out of three against a 19th c. French fencing champion.

The cross section usualy is lenticular, giving a mot of metal behind the edge.
There is quite some difference in blade thickness with means variation in weight which seems to be parallel (inverted) to the skill of the user.

The Old germanic/celtic tyoe blades are indeed very similar in type as are the blades found with the scythian and related peoples.
This is less surprising as it seems as, although not fully understood yet, the scythian rider was very much alike the germanic/celtic riders in almost all other aspects too.

China has seen an enourmous variation in swords and the finests of blades anywhere so it seems likely that the cut&thrust form was most efficient and preserved in the jian. The jian are general purpose swords and thus millennia of selection arrived at this general purpose design.


peter

This video show how powerful a jian's tip is. Even with just wrist power, it punctured through pork bone without any trouble:

http://www.rsw.com.hk/carp.zip

Peter Bosman wrote:

The jian is a cut and thrust sword. It has almost to no taper and very little distal taper. The effect is that it can strike with a lot of weight behind it and cut very effectively with the tip yet is still nible enough to thrust.

Thanks for the replies. I realise the Jian is a very different sword from the XV and XVIII, so I hope I didn't imply that it was.

Mostly, I'm just curious of why no Jian (that I have seen) seems to have fullers. My impression was that a fuller makes the sword lighter while keeping good structural integrity, and allows for thinner swords of the same mass. For a "finesse" type of cut and thrust sword, this would make a lot of sense. Not that a sword like that can't have a diamond crossection, I just wonder why it seems to be the universial standard for the Jian.