Kukri

The kukri is a knife with a distinctive inward-curving blade traditionally associated with the hill peoples of Nepal, with a documented origin commonly traced to around the seventh century CE, though its exact early history is less precisely recorded than that of many contemporary weapons. Its forward-weighted, curved blade concentrates cutting force toward the tip, making it effective both as a chopping weapon in combat and as an everyday utility and agricultural tool, and this dual civilian and martial role has kept the kukri in continuous practical use in Nepali life far beyond any single military context. The weapon became internationally well known through its association with Gurkha soldiers, Nepali hill-people recruited into British and later Indian army service from the nineteenth century onward, whose skill and reputation with the kukri in close combat made it one of the most recognizable edged weapons of any regular military force still carried into the twenty-first century.