The Antiquities of Orissa v1.c10.344

v1.c10.344

**Arms:** It is usual among European authors to treat the history of arms under four different heads: 1st, the age of stone; 2nd, the age of bronze; 3rd, the age of iron; and 4th, the middle ages. An earlier age would be that of wood, for of all artificial arms, a club, or stick, would suggest itself sooner to a primitive race than a celt of chipped flint; and certain it is that among the many barbarous races still extant in different parts of the globe, the wooden spear and the bow and arrows appear much more universal than celts and stone hatchets. Wood, however, is not lasting, and the earliest relics available being made of stone, the fourfold division is the most convenient for the arrangement of ancient arms in museums and public collections, and to a certain limited extent for the treatment of the subject in historical disquisitions, using the words "age of stone", or "age of bronze" &c., in the same way as geologists use the phrases, the age of reptiles, the age of mammals, &c., implying a prevalence of particular class of objects over, and not the total exclusion of, others. In India, the same arrangement would no doubt be desirable. The number of stone weapons, chiefly celts, knives, and arrow-heads collected in the Museum of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, fully testifies to the extensive use of such arms by the inhabitants in a historic age, and ancient Sanskrit literature also bears evidence to the fact. The monkeys of Rāma are said to have thrown stone implements against their enemies, and the thunderbolt of Indra (*Vajra*, *Aśani*) was a lithic missile; but hitherto not a single authentic speciemen of any Aryan stone weapon has been met with in this country, and bronze arms seem to be all but unknown. From the time of the *Ṛgveda* to the present day, wood and iron have been the chief, if not the only, materials employed in the fabrication of offensive weapons; and as both those articles have been used promiscuously at all times, it is impossible to divide the subject into an age of wood and another of iron. The classification adopted in the *Agni Purāṇa* is threefold, viz., missiles cast by machines, *Yantramukta*; 2nd, *ditto* hurled with the hand, *Pāṇimukta*; 3rd, non-missiles, as swords, axes, &c., *Amukta*; the last including two subsidiary classes. In Wilson's Essay "On the Art of War as known to the Hindus",¹⁷⁸ the subsidiary classes are reckoned among the primaries. These include, 1st, weapons which may be used either as non-missiles, or as missiles, *Muktāmukta*, such as javelins, spears, clubs, &c., 2nd, "Natural weapons, as the fist".