Many peoples have a type of weapon that can be considered a national symbol. For the Indians, this is the Qatar - a legendary dagger that looks so strange to the European eye that there are a lot of strange rumors and misconceptions about it. Nevertheless, the Qatar is a real military weapon. Although many secrets are really connected with him.
In the XIV century, the famous Arab traveler Ibn Battuta, who lived in India for eight years, described the following scene of the massacre: “The villagers surrounded him, and one of them stabbed him with a cathar. This is the name of an iron weapon resembling a plow share; the hand is inserted into it so that the forearm is protected; the blade is an extension of the hand and has a length of two cubits, and the blow with this weapon is fatal. This is not the first mention of Qatar in Indian written sources. However, the real heyday of this type of weapon came around the 16th century.
Armor-piercing injection
The famous Indian dagger has two names. In the Marathi or Rajasthani languages - katar, in Sanskrit or Hindi - jamadhar. In Europe, the first is more often used, but the second is considered more accurate. There are several versions of the translation of the word "jamadhar" - "tooth of the god of death", "blade of the god of death" or even "language of the god of death."
Qatar refers to knives with a butt or knuckle grip. Its hilt resembles the letter "H": the hand is held by the transverse handle, and long "tails" protect the forearm from both sides. Moreover, there are usually two crossbars. If it is alone, then in the middle is a large thickening. This is intended to provide the most secure grip possible. The double handle did not rotate in the palm. All together, they formed a very rigid structure, allowing for strong blows. When hit by a catarrh, all kinetic energy is transferred to the target with sufficiently comfortable shock absorption. For a person who hits with an ordinary knife, the main load falls on the fingers, wrist and forearm. A warrior armed with a cathar could put all his strength and weight into the injection.
All this made the cathar a truly formidable weapon and made it possible to use it to pierce chain mail or armor. There were even special "armor-piercing" cathars that had special thickenings on the blade, closer to the point.
Emphasizing their willingness to fight until victory or death, Indian warriors sometimes tied daggers to their hands. Some hilts have holes for threading a rope or even special straps. It is worth noting that the Cathars were the favorite weapon of the most desperate warriors of North India - the Rajputs, who considered themselves the direct heirs of the great kshatriyas of the past. As a rule, they took katar in their left hand, and in their right they held a saber - talwar. Although initially, it is believed that the Cathars appeared in the southern principalities.
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Three in one
The blade of the cathar has a characteristic, easily recognizable shape: an isosceles triangle with a wide base. The injection left a wide wound that caused profuse bleeding. However, in some cases, the blades could be literally any shape: curved, wavy, even similar to a scimitar. Moreover, over time, fragments of blades of European swords and swords began to be used for the Cathars. These Cathars were called "Ferengi" - "foreign".
The length of the blade varied over the widest range - from 10 centimeters to almost a meter. Accordingly, the weight also changed. The longer the cathar was, the more varied the fighting technique became. There were practically no chopping blows in it, but there were cutting-cutting blows, which also posed a considerable danger. And experienced warriors could inflict deep cuts on the enemy on the return movement after an unsuccessful injection.
Cathars with three blades that open like a fan after triggering the spring mechanism hidden in the hilt, the so-called jamadhar selikani, are not too rare. Only the middle one is a real, fully sharpened blade. The two extreme ones are just a kind of scabbard. Creepy stories are sometimes told about such "cathar-scissors" that supposedly they are opened right inside the enemy's body in order to inflict maximum damage. But this does not stand up to criticism - the effort to the owner of the dagger for such a trick would have to be made simply gigantic. Everything is much simpler - the opening cathar served as a trap for enemy weapons. A blade caught in a fork could be taken to the side, and with a good coincidence, even turned out of the hand or broken.
Another myth is that the Qatar was a dagger for hunting tigers. It can even be seen on labels in some museum display cases. Indeed, some Cathars were decorated with hunting scenes, and in the paintings of the 17th-18th centuries, you can even see how a hunter thrown from a horse defends himself with a dagger from a predator. But this only underlined the desperation of the situation in which he found himself, as well as his insane courage. The Rajputs were not insane and still tried to deal with tigers at a long distance.
Legendary Wutz
Qatar has always been a weapon that emphasized the high status of a warrior. Therefore, they were richly trimmed with gold, and in the ceremonial portraits all the nobles were necessarily depicted with the "tongue of the god of death" on their belts. They did not take them off, even sitting down at the table.
The value of this cathar was not only in the finish, but also in the metal from which it was forged. For their weapons, the Indians used wutz - the famous "Indian damask" or "cast Damascus". This metal composite with a carbon content of 1.52% had remarkable properties - hardness, toughness and ductility. As a result, the blade from the wutz could easily cut through a thrown silk scarf, but at the same time it pierced armor and was incredibly resilient.
The traditional wutz production technology was lost in the middle of the 18th century. Only descriptions survived, which were often difficult to understand.
Over time, in southern India, cathars began to be produced with an additional shield to protect the hand. The shield was quite often made in the form of a swollen hood of a cobra. Such daggers were called "berajamdada" - "bringing death". Subsequently, the Indian pata sword originated from them, which is a combination of a blade with a plate gauntlet that covers half of the forearm. For a long time, they were used in parallel with Qatar.
ONE Punch
The warlike Sikhs developed a special attitude towards Qatar. They often used the butt dagger as their main weapon, holding it in their right hand. A small round shield was taken to the left. Members of the military Sikh sect of the nihangs especially highly appreciated this unusual weapon. The fact is that one of the most important principles of their martial art was chatkha - killing with one blow. Sikhs practice the middle path, striving to be free from vices, passions and addictions. Therefore, the ethical code of nihangs prescribes to kill the enemy quickly. This confirms the lack of interest in the very process of killing the victim. Thus, nihang, killing out of necessity (enemy or animal), does not commit evil deeds. The massive, deeply penetrating blade of the cathar, with a confident and accurate blow, made it possible to implement this principle in the best possible way.
Victor BANEV