India as Known to Panini: A Study of the Cultural Material in the Ashtadhyayi c12.s3.6

c12.s3.6

The arrows were fitted with barbs (*patra*) to make them strike with deadlier effect. Pāṇini refers to the use of barbed arrows (*sapatra*), causing extreme pain (*Sapatra-nishpatrād ati-vyathane*, V.4.61). This is confirmed by the account of Plutarch of the arrow with which Alexander was wounded in the fortress of the Malloi (*Mālavas*). He also gives the measurement of the barb: 'An archer let fly an arrow which transfixed his cuirass and pierced to the bones around his breast and there stuck fast, the shaft as it projected from the wound aggravating the pain (cf. Pāṇini's *ativyathana*), while the iron of the barb measured four fingers in breadth and five in length'. (McCrindle, *Alexander*, 1901, p. 207).