Filipino Laring sword review
Jan 14, 2010 6:07:57 GMT
Post by Deleted on Jan 14, 2010 6:07:57 GMT
According to a lot of my relatives, we've been using the balisong for way longer than that french drawing with the similar design was even dated coming from. That can be debated, however.
It is a big point of contention among many Batanguenos (peole from batangas, where the balisong comes from) and phillippine historians to say that it's a french design, when the Balisong has been in use in batangas since 800A.D. The french design, which supposedly came from a book called "Le Perret", was made in the 1700's and claimed that they were is use in France since the 1600's.
Also, the Phillippines have never had any significant history with France. A lot of people use the argument that the design could have come from cultural exchange when the Spaniards invaded. This seems plausible, as a spaniard could have been carrying some paraphernalia of other countries, as travellers are often known to do. (As a side note: Rembrandt, who was dutch, was an ethnographic weapons collector, who had a particular affinity for the Javanese Keris. You can see one being used in his painting "The blinding of Samson", being used to stab the titular character in his right eye)
I, myself, try to stay objective when thinking about its origins. On one hand, a lot of phillippine martial artists (as do many martial artists of other cultures' fighting systems) have built up a mythology in and of itself which may not be entirely true. On the other hand, history tends to bias itself towards the west, and anything similar in other countries and cultures (save for china) tend to be pushed by the wayside for preference of a different story (Forr example, the story of Christopher Columbus 'discovering' America. That piece of history begs the question: How does one 'discover' a land mass when people have been living there for ages?)
In any case, I'll take both claims at face value, but I have not decided personally which I accept as historical truth.
It is a big point of contention among many Batanguenos (peole from batangas, where the balisong comes from) and phillippine historians to say that it's a french design, when the Balisong has been in use in batangas since 800A.D. The french design, which supposedly came from a book called "Le Perret", was made in the 1700's and claimed that they were is use in France since the 1600's.
Also, the Phillippines have never had any significant history with France. A lot of people use the argument that the design could have come from cultural exchange when the Spaniards invaded. This seems plausible, as a spaniard could have been carrying some paraphernalia of other countries, as travellers are often known to do. (As a side note: Rembrandt, who was dutch, was an ethnographic weapons collector, who had a particular affinity for the Javanese Keris. You can see one being used in his painting "The blinding of Samson", being used to stab the titular character in his right eye)
I, myself, try to stay objective when thinking about its origins. On one hand, a lot of phillippine martial artists (as do many martial artists of other cultures' fighting systems) have built up a mythology in and of itself which may not be entirely true. On the other hand, history tends to bias itself towards the west, and anything similar in other countries and cultures (save for china) tend to be pushed by the wayside for preference of a different story (Forr example, the story of Christopher Columbus 'discovering' America. That piece of history begs the question: How does one 'discover' a land mass when people have been living there for ages?)
In any case, I'll take both claims at face value, but I have not decided personally which I accept as historical truth.
