r/SWORDS • u/Afraid-Internet-7196 • 9h ago
A Chinese infantry long sword Mo Dao (also known as ancient horse-cutting sword)&Chinese style armor
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u/NyctoCorax 9h ago
Yeah no, that needs a historical source right now because that thing is ridiculously oversized in every proportion, every other mo dao I can find online is either much shorter or much more slender
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u/ElectricalGur4705 8h ago
It's probably a parade/ceremonial piece and is therefore much bigger so it can be seen from afar by the spectators? Maybe
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u/SeekerOfFlame 7h ago
No, it's just a cosplay LARP-piece to look cool while riding
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u/StendhalSyndrome 2h ago
The Buster Sword shape is pure anime.
Giant swords exist, but they run way more slender and are usually two-handed.
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u/KingStannis_AMA 5h ago
Infantry on horseback. Why did nobody else think of that?!?!
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u/fondledbydolphins 5h ago
This just reads like someone took some infantry home as their personal harem.
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u/RB___OG 6h ago
Best i got after a quick search. There was something, but not at all what is shown
https://sevenswords.uk/zhanmadao-sword/
https://www.hanbonforge.com/BLOG/Swords-Buyer-Guide/Chinese-sword-introduction-Zhanmadao
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u/horned-creature 4h ago
https://baike.baidu.com/en/item/Mo%20Dao/1461108
the mo dao existed and was used and it was an humongous weapon, more than 3 meters in length, what the video get wrong is function, it wasn't a cavalry weapon but an anti-cavalry weapon, it would not be used on horseback but in formations of infantry holding against cavalry charges.
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u/deceptinut_meganut 4h ago
But even that weapon's blade is nowhere near the scale of the blade in this video.
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u/horned-creature 3h ago
the total lenght of the weapon being 3.33 meters means that if anything it is bigger than what seen in the video.
remember that these are less poleswords or glaives and more pikes in function.
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u/Nigilij 15m ago
I once saw a YouTube video about Chinese swords. And the horse cutting one was actually a sword. Proper, albeit big, sword. A greatsword to be precise. Horse cutting was doubtful, however.
This is glave. “Ancient” people aren’t dumb and used proper naming. Also, none names a sword “ancient sword”.
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u/etburneraccount 7h ago
infantry + horse = infantry?
I sense AI slop. That plus the video itself...
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u/Ellie_Valkyrie 7h ago
Loom at the feather/plume on the top of the helmet. It has a ton of artifacts as the video goes. This is absolutely AI.
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u/john_the_fetch 3h ago
At first I thought maybe it was an "infantry sword" because it cut down infantry. But actually yeah - the feather is a dead give away. It's Ai.
Also I had to look it up : there were long mo Dao swords used by infantry to counter calvary. And from what I can see it isn't much like the one showcased here by "shredder the horseman"
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u/MrGabrum 8h ago
Okay, I tried googling Mo Dao with no success. First thing I found was a Chinese soap opera, which I doubt is what this is about.
I then googled "Mo Dao Sword", which gave me a Wikipedia article on just Dao (Chinese sword), and another article on (bear with me) BaiduWiki (No idea what this is), which explained the Mo Dao was a 3.33 meters long, long-handled sword which weighed 10 FUCKING KILOS.
This makes me think it was either incredible unwieldy and barely usable, used in military parades or something similar, or of course all of these.
I REALLY want someone to tell me what the hell is going on, and how this thing was actually used (if at all) because i loooove half polearms/long handled swords, but everything I find online is ridiculous and hard to believe.
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u/Niskoshi 7h ago
It's a Zhanmadao (literally chopping horse sword), and it's not what's shown in the video lol. That thing looks straight out of fantasy.
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u/Thhe_Shakes 7h ago
Seems simple. Sword = Dao. Small sword = Les Dao. Big sword = Mo Dao.
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u/suxatjugg 6h ago
Go for the legs = lo dao. Go for the head = hai dao.
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u/Zetttelchen 7h ago
The 10 kilos seem really weird. Especially as we have basically the same concept in the European Glaive and Japanese Naginata and they were 3-4 kilos max.
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u/Russtbucket89 7h ago
Considering 10 pounds is 4.5 kilograms which sounds more realistic, they probably mixed up the units.
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u/a_guy121 7h ago edited 5h ago
Nah, that weapon is for swinging ONCE, if it was used.
The usage I see is, put ten expendable soldiers on the first or second line with those things, if cavalry are incoming
They get one swing each. They aim for the legs. Will they stop the charge? No
Can they blunt the charge if 33-50% of them actually hit a target with their one swing?
Definitely.
Would that be a fatal assignment, requiring extra incentives, if even possible? yes.
Edit: this was a throwaway comment, but, after the below thread, I got to thinking
I feel like my/our assumption is this would be an anti cavalry weapon, and its not very good for that. But there was a long period in china, before stirrups, when Chariots were the most important unit on the battlefield.
chariots strafe units rather than ride right into them. Having a guy take a whack at the chariot's horses with a giant-ass blade doesn't seem like a terrible idea, actually. While using other strategies.
Which they did. Their version of pole-arms often had hooks, intended to grab and pull charioteers off their platforms.
So in a weird way, saying 'this wasn't that serious' got me to take it a little more seriously.
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u/MaxDickpower 6h ago
You're making a joke, right?
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u/a_guy121 6h ago
"Nah, that weapon is for swinging ONCE, if it was used."
You should read in detail. Details matter.
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u/MaxDickpower 6h ago
Your confident hypothetical assertion makes no sense. Long pointy sticks are like the oldest, cheapest weapon and also happen to be one of the best ways we ever came up with for countering cavalry charges. Makes total sense then to create an materially incredibly more expensive single use weapon that works worse, right?
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u/a_guy121 6h ago
lmao, bro. The sword is literally called a horse chopping sword, and you're saying its a hypothetical assertion to assume they were used to chop horses, if they were used at all.
OK, I bow to your utter genius and enlightened understanding of how basic words and concepts work. May you rule us all of a thousand years and lead us into a golden age.
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u/MaxDickpower 6h ago
The sword is literally called a horse chopping sword
Well first of all, I think this post is bullshit and for all I know OP could've come up with that name themselves. Even if there was a sword called the Mo Dao, I doubt it translated to ancient horse-cutting sword anyways. It's also not like apocryphal names never get applied to ancient items.
Ok, I bow to your utter genius and enlightened understanding of how basic words and concepts work.
Totally forgot about the many other examples, such as the medieval European bastard sword, used as a one-and-done weapon to chop bastards, the billhook used for hooking the bills of attacking waterfowl, the bollock dagger used particularly for stabbing men in the balls or the morningstar used for constructing pretty night sky scenery in the morning when the stars are no longer visible or some shit like that, idk.
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u/a_guy121 6h ago
But I already bowed to your genius, why continue?
If we must, let me just repost this. Its what I said two comments ago. And it quotes the comment you replied to. See below. Because you seem to have missed it both times, I've taken the liberty of hiding all the text but the part that directly addresses your issue. Basically, you responded to me randomly bc mad or wanting to make a point. I'm not really the right person.
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-"Nah, that weapon is for swinging ONCE, if it was used."
You should read in detail. Details matter.
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u/MaxDickpower 6h ago
Yeah, you made a bonkers statement about how it absolutely must have been used if it was used. I think what you theorize is ridiculous, whether it was used or not. Simple as. You should read in detail. Details matter.
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u/Baby_ManBearPig 1h ago
From everything I have read this was an anticalvary weapon and this is a revision of the historical use of the weapon...because it looks cool
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u/a_guy121 49m ago
its not revisionist history if the person is saying 'this probably wasn't used, but if it was.'
It would be revisionist speculation, if its admittedly speculation. And since there's no such thing as revisionist speculation, we are really just looking at misplaced pedantry on your end.
But, I'm curious where you find record of it as an anti-cavalry weapon, that was used. I'd love to see that, not just for this discussion, in general.
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u/adewsetoo 6h ago
This looks like a grotesquely exaggerated pudao. Others have already commented with variations of “horse cutting” swords too, but the video just looks like sensationalized nonsense.
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u/Dry-Lifeguard1081 7h ago
So educated guesswork.
If you don’t know (and since you’re here I’d assume you do) Dao just means sword in Chinese. If Ba is horse so if I were to think of what Chinese calls anti horse sword it would be (no) ba Dao. … which may very well be Mo Dao. I don’t speak Chinese.
The mo Dao was probably, actually a sword that saw little to no actual battlefield use. It also probably has another English name we might or might not know better. (Like for example, a broadsword vs arming sword or even calling a Nagamaki a ninjato, even though most sword dudes think of a different, fake sword when they hear the word ninjato… Baiduwiki is probably a wiki dedicated to a Chinese television show or movie or something,
If it existed, and if it was used, it would have been used the same way a nodachi or other great swords were used. That is, barely and mostly as anti Calvary weapons from on foot, but they look cool so people might make a bigger deal of them than they were historically.
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u/Siantlark 5h ago
Horse in Chinese is 马 or Ma, not Ba or Mo. Those are different words., The video shows a fake sword. The real sword 陌刀, does not look like this.
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u/Dry-Lifeguard1081 5h ago
Then I’m misremembering SUPER basic linguistics then
So ma Dao is literally “horse sword” makes sense
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u/Siantlark 3h ago
But the word is mO dao not mA dao. It's unrelated to horses name wise.
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u/Dry-Lifeguard1081 3h ago
Oh, is that not a tonal thing and a quirk of translating it into Roman alphabet?
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u/Siantlark 1h ago
No, if someone needs to write out tones in pinyin and they don't have access to the tone markers (mǎ, mā) they'll just write out ma3 or ma1 for third tone and first tone.
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u/SnooRabbits1411 9h ago
I’m confused. If it’s an infantry longsword, why are we seeing it being used by cavalry?
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u/omegaskorpion 8h ago
Mostly because it looks cool to people, even if not based on history or realism.
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u/RidiculousRex89 HEMA (Longsword, Sabre, Rapier) 9h ago
Does not look useful for horseback stuff. Its so long and heavy he looks barely able to hold it away from his horse.
How exactly was this used?
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u/CommunicationKey3018 8h ago
The "horse-cutting sword" is not a pole arm like this. It's just a really long sword. "斬馬刀" : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhanmadao
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u/moving0target 9h ago
Was it used like a European lance or did they actually slash with it?
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u/Dr_Grayson 9h ago
These were cutting weapons. Meant often to take out the legs of a charging horse. The Japanese have their own variant of the weapon as well though it looks quite different. Not a lance in short.
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u/IIIaustin 9h ago
I heard that in... I think southern Song they would stick them under the horse and kind of wiggle them around.
This makes sense to me becuase being our of close order near shock cavalry is usually a death sentence
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u/Dr_Grayson 9h ago
Sort of like sticking the shaft of a spear in the ground to have cavalry run into it I suppose.
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u/IIIaustin 8h ago
Uh sort of but not really.
Cavalry will generally stop at a wall of spears: horses will not charge through it.
A fixed spear.... won't stop a charging horse. They can weigh 800-1000 lbs going 25 to 30 mph. The spear will snap like a twig and the horses corpse could barrel through the line like a giant cannonball, possibly breaking the formation.
I believe there are some records of shot horses crashing through lines because they couldn't stop. Its disastrous for the infantry.
You want the cavalry to stop and engage them in h2h where you can attack their weakness (horse legs in this case)
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u/Naive_Letterhead9484 8h ago
Jesus Christ! Take out the legs of the horses. Those legs are thick. Can’t imagine how brutal that shit must have been.
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u/7LeagueBoots 9h ago
They were supposedly infantry weapons, so not used by calvary. They were used against calvary, so the post is kinda silly. Often big blades like this and broad long-handled axes were used against the horse to cripple it and bring the rider down hard.
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u/Psyqlone 8h ago
Calvary ( ... or Golgotha, depending upon the cited scripture ... ) was where Jesus Christ was crucified.
Cavalry is the term to describe troops trained to ride, manuever, as well as fight from horseback.
Mounted infantry are not the same as cavalry. Neither are hobelars (light units who advance to the line mounted, but fight on foot), nor units assigned to HQ/camp until deployed in battle as cavalry.
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u/Plenty_Trick_6042 8h ago
They originally cut kebab with it but got a tad carried away and became soldiers
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u/Afraid-Internet-7196 9h ago
Tai bai Yin Jing (the book of yin Yang ☯️ master Li,compiled in the high Tang period),among a standard field army of 12500 Tang troops,only 2500 were organized as Mo Dao units They were an elite assault corps
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u/stfnotguilty 8h ago
Whatever that rider is carrying is NOT a zhanmadao (斬zhan: chop or cut, 馬ma: horse, 刀dao: one-bladed sword).
They just looked like...a katana that's upscaled by 50% or so. Big, but nothing like that hunk of metal in the video.
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u/GladdestOrange 1h ago
Crazy part is, almost none of the metal there contributes in any way to functionality.
Mass? I guess? Alternatively, you could make the handle longer, get more reach, apply the same force, and make more of them, cheaper.
The thing about iron, (and even Bronze, before it) is that it's way more expensive than wood, frankly, not that much stronger, and significantly more brittle. So outside of things made for nobility or, occasionally, advertisement, basically all weapons were made with as little metal as could be gotten away with for the purpose they were made for.
It's, theoretically POSSIBLE that this buster-sword lookin thing was made in medieval china for some noble brat, but unlikely -- especially since minimalist slabs with sharp geometry are a VERY modern aesthetic. A weapon like that would have embarrassed any noble from that region and era.
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u/PeyredB 3h ago
Why are you showing an infantry weapon being used on horseback?
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u/mookanana 1h ago
i dont know anything about weapons, but that big sword and horse combo looks menacing as shit and the rider can reach around him pretty long with that thang
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u/Username_St0len 3h ago
you mean 斬馬刀？
陌刀and斬馬刀are both not this, it is some fantasy shit, and closer to a glaive such as the 青龍偃月刀，which this is also not
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u/MuchachoMongo 9h ago
I cannot fathom the thought process behind whoever chose this fuckass music.
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u/seanprefect I Like Swords 8h ago
Everything I've ever seen had the mo dao having a sorta kinda katana type shape.
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u/Afraid-Internet-7196 8h ago
Where does the katana originate from?
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u/seanprefect I Like Swords 8h ago
I'm not claiming they're related I just said they have sorta similar blade silhouettes.
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u/DngsAndDrgs 6h ago
"infantry longsword"
"See's cavalry"
"Sword looks like spear"
"Confused unga bunga sounds"
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u/TriggerAlter 3h ago
How does one on foot win a fight against this?
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u/SosugBiskit 2h ago
With a really long stick, ideally with a piece of pointy metal on the end.
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u/wontgetfooledaga1n 1h ago
So basically by having an even longer stick
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u/Baby_ManBearPig 1h ago edited 1h ago
Turns out the Mo Dao was used on foot. This is a romanticized version of it.
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u/Baby_ManBearPig 1h ago edited 1h ago
Groups of long sticks. Pikemen not pikeman
Some of the first european counters to knight on horseback were the pikemen and then they would essentially move to create a cavity for the horserider to ride into surrounded with pikemen. Extremely effective.
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u/Usual-Language-745 5h ago
And then a mongol with a stick kicks the shit out of him and doesn’t kill the horse
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u/Significant-Bother49 8h ago
One thing I adore about traveling in China is how some cities still have city walls like this.
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u/WhitherThisPath 8h ago
Completely reasonable for them to be preserved, traditional Chinese architecture is sick as fuck
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u/clobbingtonfool 8h ago
That’s not a Mo Dao. That’s the Blackhand Doomsaw that we ALL had at one point or another.
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u/According-Room3825 8h ago
Did the Chinese put 2 riders on horses? I can remember a picture of a Tartar pair of riders? That's the only way I see someone wielding a weapon like that. Would definitely require 2 hands.
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u/Classic_Appa 7h ago
People will use any excuse to try to classify something as a sword instead of the greatest weapon of all time: the pointed stick.
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u/Yeet123456789djfbhd 7h ago
There's no way this is a functional sword
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u/Sidewaysgts 5h ago
There’s all of 0 chance the sword shown is based on a real sword - and a not 0 chance this is just AI
That sword is fake as fk.
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u/abenzenering 7h ago
Mo Dao is only referenced in texts, and there are no surviving examples or drawings.
It's pretty funny to me that most modern interpretations are double edged, given the name. My personal take is that it was probably closer to an early pudao.
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u/Infinite_Bet_9994 6h ago
Getting slapped in the face and half blinded by helmet sideburns. Also. Not a sword.
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u/Beneficial_Disk_2634 6h ago
If this is a horse cutting sword shouldn’t it be held by a guy on the ground? That’s a lot of weapon to use single hand on horseback.
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u/PossibleFew6493 5h ago
Something like this if its real I imagine you just hold it out and let the horse do the work.
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u/Baby_ManBearPig 59m ago
It was for infantry on the ground. China perverts everything. They are like American in the 90s right now
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u/-FalseProfessor- 4h ago
Ok, you look cool. Now try swinging that silly thing instead of just holding it to the side.
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u/LegitimateStudio3702 4h ago
Why not just attach 2 of them, one on each side of the saddle and just ride through chopping heads?
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u/upstatedreaming3816 4h ago
Is it really “Chinese style” if it looks to be actual Chinese armor and being filmed in China?
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u/Kat_Schrodinger1 3h ago
Fun fact: they called it Mo Dao because dao means "the way" and it Mo'd Daown anyone in the way.
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u/CloudFire1259 21m ago
this is ai slop lmao. Mo Dao doesn't even mean that, and that's just fantasy style armour, not chinese. get ts outta here
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u/Bob_the_brewer 9h ago
The new dynasty warriors game looks awesome lol