Urumi
Also known as: chuttuval, surul val, surul katti, surul pattakatti
A flexible sword from Kerala with a long, springy steel blade that bends like a whip; in kalaripayattu it is taught only as the last weapon.
Quick Facts
IndiaAbout the weapon
The urumi is a flexible sword from southern India, originating in the region of today's Kerala state. It is thought to have existed as early as the Sangam period; we have not been able to establish a more precise date. The British ethnographer Edgar Thurston recorded its use among the Tiyyar in his work Castes and Tribes of Southern India. In Malayalam it is also called chuttuval, from chuttu (coiling, turning) and val (sword). The blade is of flexible ground wootz steel and is usually 19 to 25 mm wide. Total length ranges roughly from 122 to 168 cm; ideally the blade should match the arm span of the person using it. The iron or brass hilt matches that of the talwar sword: a disc-shaped pommel, often with a short ornamental spike in the centre, a cross-guard and often a slender knuckle-guard. The Sri Lankan variant can have up to 32 blades and is usually used in a pair, one in each hand. In Indian martial arts such as kalaripayattu, the urumi is almost always taught as the last weapon. Training assumes the practitioner already knows how to handle both the whip and the sword. In the film Ondanondu Kaladalli, the characters played by Shankar Nag and Sundar Raj fight to the death with urumis in hand. In current pop culture it is carried by the character Mitsuri Kanroji in Demon Slayer, it appears in the game Elden Ring, and the character Nilah wields it in League of Legends.