Monk's spade

'Zen Staff'), also called a Shaolin spade, is a Chinese polearm consisting of a long pole with a flat spade-like blade on one end and a smaller crescent shaped blade on the other.

In old China, Buddhist monks often carried spades (shovels) with them when travelling.

This served two purposes: if they came upon a corpse on the road, they could properly bury it with Buddhist rites, and the large implement could serve as a weapon for defence against bandits.

The crescent was designed as defense against small to medium-sized predators such as wild dogs and leopards.

You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.This article relating to polearms is a stub.