Sword Sunday #13: The Pata (gauntlet sword)

While its easy to let the most common types of sword dominate our imagination, its important that we don't forget some of the more inventive blades to enter usage in human history.

The Pata, or dandpatta in the native Marathi language, looks like a sword with the protective gauntlet built in. While this is true, the weapon was much much more when you look below the surface.

Over history, one of the things that has given the sword such a powerful striking ability if the leverage afford it by means of reach, and speed. The tip of an arming sword, or a saber, when wielded in the hands of a skilled swordsman, can be brought up to speed matching, or even exceeding the top speed of a major leave baseball pitch (world record: 105.1 MPH by Aroldis Chapman, 2010). That type of speed, when put behind a twenty or thirty ounce steel blade and condensed into an edge as sharp as some of the finer kitchen knives is capable of doing massive amounts of trauma to a human target, the physics alone of such a hit, both with the force, and the depth of a likely cut are grim to contemplate.

But with this speed, comes an inherent weakness. The sword is joined to the user at the hand, and the smallest muscles in that union are in the fingers and wrist. If not held properly, or blocked successfully it is possible to have the weapon knocked clear of the user's hand.

A type of open Pata, hand grip and wrist guard in detail.

The pata, which was used exclusively on the Indian subcontinent in the 17th and 18th centuries, take the question of weapons retention  and leverage and almost literally turns it on its head. Rather than rely on the sleep of the wrist and hand to generate power, the elongated hand guard also acts like a brace, marrying the weapon to the user's forearm, allowing them to use the larger muscles of the arm and shoulder to directly generate much, much more power while minimizing the need for hand and wrist strength to almost nothing.

While the weapon looks at first glance to be optimized for thrusting, (and with its construction, there is no doubt it could deliver a devastation blow), The technique its users were trained with emphasized slashing and hacking blows, including use from horseback in some cases. The type of bracing and grip built into the weapon would make it close to impossible to knock out of someone's grip, and while it could never match the speeds of a classic sword, the power behind a swung blow could easily match, as the weapon was more directly transmitting the gross muscle movements of the upper and lower arm into the blade.

Records indicate that the pata was used by elite troops and bodyguards in the  Mughal period of india, but never left the subcontinent, and did serve along side more classic swords through its existence.



His Lordship Ivo Blackhawk
Kingdom of Ansteorra
"Long Live the King!"