The sword-fish (_Xiphias_), although a vegetable feeder, is mentioned
by Pliny (xxxii. 6) as able to sink a ship. It is recorded to have
killed a man when bathing in the Severn near Worcester. It attacks
the whale, and it has been known to transfix a vessel’s side with its
terrible weapon. The narwhal or sea-unicorn (_Monodon monoceros_)
carries a formidable tusk, a Sword-blade of the same kind similarly
used.[35]
Here may be offered a single proof how Man, living among, and
dependent for food upon, the lower animals, borrowed from their habits
and experience his earliest practice of offence and defence. The
illustration represents a ‘Singhauta,’[36] ‘Mádu’ or ‘Máru’ (double
dagger), made from the horns of the common Indian antelope, connected
by crossbars. In its rude state, and also tipped with metal, it is
still used as a weapon by the wild Bhíls, and as a crutch and dagger
by the Jogis (Hindús) and Fakirs (Hindís or Moslems), both orders
of religious mendicants who are professionally forbidden to carry
secular arms. It also served for defence, like the parrying-stick of
Africa and Australia, till it was fitted with a hand-guard, and the
latter presently expanded into a circular targe of metal. This ancient
instrument, with its graceful curves, shows four distinct stages of
development: first, the natural, and, secondly, the early artificial,
with metal caps to make it a better thrusting weapon. The third process
was to forge the whole of metal; and the fourth and final provided
it with a straight, broad blade, springing at right angles from the
central grip. This was the ‘Adaga’[37] of mediæval writers.
[Illustration: FIG. 8.—THE ADAGA.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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