The Antiquities of Orissa v1.c10.419

v1.c10.419

**Armour for the trunk:** Armour for the body is likewise, wanting at Bhuvaneśvara and Puri. But in Mr. Fergusson’s *Tree and Serpent Worship*, there is a figure from Amarāvati lithographed from a drawing in the *Mackenzie Collection*, (plate LXVI), which appears as if dressed in a coat of chain-mail; (Illustration No. 91); but without a careful examination of the original, its nature cannot be definitively settled. This is, however, scarcely necessary, for there is ample written evidence to prove that formerly metallic coats were in common use, as in Europe during the middle ages, by superior officers and distinguished warriors and chiefs. The Kṣatriya or miliary caste early assumed the distinctive surname of Varmaṇ or the “mail-clad,” and the Sanskrit language includes more than a dozen names for armour for the chest. In the *Ṛgveda* the coat of mail (*kavaca*) is repeatedly mentioned. Thus, Agni is invoked “to blaze (fiercely), repelling repeatedly, like a coat of mail, the enemies of his worshippers in combats.”²⁰³ The Aśvins are asked to be “like two dogs, warding off injury to the persons” of his adorers, “and, like two coats of mail, to defend them from decay.”²⁰⁴ “When the mailed warrior advances in front of battles, his form is like that of a cloud: with his body unwounded do thou conquer; may the strength of the armour defend thee.”²⁰⁵ Again, “I cover thy vital parts with armour.”²⁰⁶ “Slayer of enemies, thou, Indra, art our armour.”²⁰⁷ In none of these and in several other such passages is the material of the armour indicated; but the Maruts are described in two or three places as having “golden breast-plates”.²⁰⁸ Elsewhere the attendants of Kasu, son of Cedi, are described as “wearing cuirasses of leather", ²⁰⁹ and in an old hymn in the First Book, Agni is said to defend "the man who gives presents ( to the priests ) on every side, like well-stitched armour", which Dr. Wilson supposed was a "quilted jacket such as is still sometimes worn". ²¹⁰ This leather, or quilted coat was probably longer than the chain-mail, and reached the knees. Something like it is described in the following passage from the *Uttararāmacarita* in which Janaka expresses his first impression of Rāma: