Weapons of the Hand: Farm Tools, Claws and Martial Arts Sticks from the Scythe to the Kubotan

The scythe began as an agricultural hand tool for mowing grass and harvesting crops, with a curved steel blade sixty to ninety centimeters long. When firearms ran short, it was pressed into service as an improvised weapon, most famously by Polish peasant soldiers in the 1794 Kosciuszko Uprising, who remounted the blade parallel to the shaft to make a war scythe.

The gada is a mallet or blunt mace from the Indian subcontinent, with a spherical or spiked head fixed to a shaft. One surviving 17th-century Indo-Persian example is made of steel and gold. It carries religious weight as the signature weapon of Hanuman and of Vishnu, and the Mahabharata names Bhima and Duryodhana among its masters.

The meteor hammer is an ancient Chinese weapon of two weights joined by a rope or chain, and it goes by many names, including dai chui, flying hammer and dragon's fist. Little evidence survives that it was used in real combat, so it is documented chiefly as a traditional martial arts weapon.

The bagh nakh, meaning tiger's claw in Hindi, is a claw-like dagger from the Indian subcontinent. Four or five curved blades sit on a crossbar or glove, made to fit over the knuckles or hide under the palm, and it is believed to have been inspired by the armament of big cats.

The dirk is a long-bladed thrusting dagger that began as the personal sidearm of Highland clansmen, called the biodag in Scottish Gaelic. It later became the traditional weapon of Highland regiment officers, pipers and drummers between roughly 1725 and 1800, and was carried by naval officers for hand-to-hand fighting in the Age of Sail.

The tonfa is a stick roughly 15 to 20 inches long with a perpendicular handle about a third of the way down, traditionally made of red or white oak and wielded in pairs. It comes from the armed side of Okinawan martial arts, where it is called the tunkua, though accounts of its exact origin are debated between China, Okinawa and Southeast Asia.

The nunchaku is two hardwood sticks joined at their ends by a short chain or rope. Its true origin is uncertain, with accounts pointing to a Northern Song Chinese military text, Southeast Asian rice threshing tools or Okinawan horse equipment. It became widely known after Bruce Lee used it in 1970s films, which led several countries to restrict ownership.

The Kubotan is a self-defense keychain weapon developed by Soke Takayuki Kubota in the late 1960s, no more than 140 millimeters long and about 13 millimeters across, usually of hard plastic. Its name joins Kubota with baton, and it has since become a genericized trademark.