The Chinese weapon known as the [podao] pudao (Chinese: 樸刀;pinyin: pú dāo/Chinese: 朴刀;pinyin: pò dāo) was originally an edged infantry weapon which is still used for training in many Chinese martial arts. The blade of a pudao [podao] is shaped like a Chinese broadsword, but the weapon has a longer handle usually around one and a half to two meters (about four to six feet) which is circular in cross section. It looks somewhat similar to the guandao. The pudao is sometimes called a horse-cutter sword since it is speculated to have been used to slice the legs out from under a horse during battle {cf. zhanmadao}. It is somewhat analogous to the Japanese nagamaki, although the nagamaki sword may have been developed independently. Looking at the standards of its design, the pudao is also equivalent to the Korean hyeopdo.
An example of the Chinese púdāo.
| |||||||||||||||||||||||
The original article can be found at Podao and the edit history here.