Chinese Ji

Origins

The distinctive weapon of the Chinese Bronze Age was the ge, or dagger-axe: a bronze blade like a short dagger mounted at a right angle on a wooden shaft, used to hook and slash at men on foot or in chariots. The spear, mao, was used alongside it. During the Western Zhou dynasty, from the eleventh century BC, smiths began to combine the two — casting a spearhead and a dagger-axe blade in one piece, or mounting them together on a single shaft — and the result was the ji. It could do everything the ge could do and also thrust like a spear, and by the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods it was one of the most important weapons in Chinese armies.

Design & Construction

A ji has a spear point at the top of the shaft and one or more side blades below it. On early bronze examples the side blade is the old dagger-axe, projecting at a right angle; some ji from the Warring States period carry two or three dagger-axe blades stacked on one shaft. Shafts ranged from under two to more than three meters, the longer ones for use from chariots, and were made of wood or of laminated bamboo and wood strips bound with lacquer for strength and flexibility. Bronze fittings capped the butt. From the Han dynasty ji were forged of iron, often in the shape of a spear point with a single curved side branch — the "cross-shaped" ji. Later the fangtian ji, with crescent-shaped blades on one or both sides of the point, became the best-known form.

Combat Use

In the era of chariot warfare the ji let a warrior hook an enemy from his chariot or cut at horses' legs, and in massed infantry fighting it could thrust over the front rank, pull down shields and slash at the enemy's flank. The great armies of the Warring States, numbering in the hundreds of thousands, were armed with crossbows, swords and pole weapons like the ji, and the bronze ji found with the terracotta army of the First Emperor of Qin show how widely it was issued. Under the Han it remained a standard infantry and cavalry weapon, used against the Xiongnu of the northern steppe.

Legacy

After the Han dynasty the spear and the sword, such as the Chinese Dao, gradually replaced the ji on the battlefield, and it became a weapon of palace guards, ceremonies and martial arts. Its fame lives on through the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, in which the warrior Lü Bu wields a fangtian ji, and through Chinese opera and film. It is the closest Chinese equivalent of the European Halberd and Poleaxe, and bronze ji from the Zhou and Warring States periods are prized museum pieces. See also Chinese Arms & Weapons.