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War in Ancient India c6.s1: Section II: Fire Arms

War in Ancient India c6.s1

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Section II: Fire Arms

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In this connexion it would be interesting to examine the true nature of the āgneya-astras. Kauṭalya describes agni-bāṇa,³² and mentions three recipes—agni-dhāraṇa, kṣepyo-agni-yoga, and viśvāsaghāti. The agni-dhāraṇa is said to consist of small balls made of the dung of the ass, camel, goat and sheep, mixed with the wood of sarala (pinus longifolia), devadāru (deodar), the leaf of pūtitṛṇa (lemon grass), guggulu, śrīveṣṭaka (turpentine) and lac. The kṣepyo-agni-yoga was a fire arm consisting of ‘the dung of the horse, ass, camel or cattle, mixed with priyāla cūrṇa (buchanania latifolia), avalguja (vernonia authelmintica), lamp black and bees’ wax’. Viśvāsaghāti was composed of ‘the powder of all the metals as red as fire or the mixture of the powder of kumbhi, lead, zinc, mixed with the charcoal powder of the flowers of paribhadraka, palāśa and hair, and with oil wax and turpentine’. From the nature of the ingredients of the different compositions it would appear that they were highly inflammable and could not be easily extinguished. About the third and the last recipe, a recent writer remarks: ‘The Viśvāsaghāti-agni-yoga was virtually a bomb which burst and the fragments of metals were scattered in all directions. The agni-bāṇa was the fore-runner of a gun-shot…… Sometimes the metallic head of the arrow was made red-hot by charcoal fire and the hot arrow will prove more dangerous than the cool. The aboriginal tribes of Kols and Santals of Bengal and Bihar shoot bear with redhot arrows, which they say, kill the beasts while cool arrows prove ineffective. It is to be noted that among the war materials collected in the battlefield of Kurukṣetra charcoal was one’.³³

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³² XIII. 4. In the Lalitopākhyāna of the Brahmāṇḍa Purāṇa fire arms are mentioned as being used in the war with Bhaṇḍa.

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³³ Jogesh Chandra Ray: *Fire Arms in Ancient India*, *I.H.Q.*, viii, p. 268. 34 *Ibid.*, pp. 586-88. 35 I. 16.4. 36 I. 4.8. 37 I. 5. 38 XI, 103.

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Intimately connected with this topic is the question whether the ancient Hindus knew the use of gunpowder and guns. Sir A. M. Elliot tells us that the Arabs learnt the manufacture of gunpowder from India, and that before their Indian connexion they had used arrows of naphtha. It is also argued that though Persia possessed saltpetre in abundance, the original home of gunpowder was India. It is said that the Turkish word *top* and the Persian *tupang* or *tufang* are derived from the Sanskrit *dhūpa*. The *dhūpa* of the Agni Purāṇa means a rocket, perhaps a corruption of the Kauṭalīyan term *nāla dīpikā*.³⁴

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In the light of the above remarks we shall trace the evolution of fire-arms in ancient India. Commencing our enquiry from the *Ṛg Veda Saṃhitā*, there is evidence to show that *agni* (fire) was praised for vanquishing an enemy. The *Atharva Veda* shows the employment of fire-arms with lead shots.³⁵ The *Aitareya Brāhmaṇa*³⁶ describes an arrow with fire at its tip. The term *sūrmi* in the *Ṛg Veda*,³⁷ considered in the light of its use as the death penalty for criminal offenders as in the *Mānava-dharma-śāstra*,³⁸ must have been of the nature of a hollow tube and has nothing to do with guns.

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In the *Mahābhārata* and the *Rāmāyaṇa*, the employment of āgneyāstras is frequently mentioned, and this deserves careful examination in the light of other important terms like ayah, kanapa and tulā-guḍa. Though the commentator Nīlakaṇṭha would easily explain them away as guns, kanapa is perhaps the same as kuṇapa in the Matsya Purāṇa.³⁹ In the Daśakumāra-caritra the term is kanapa, and the reading of the Matsya Purāṇa perhaps may be faulty. The other term, tulā-guḍa which is said to produce a noise like thunder is difficult to explain.⁴⁰ Guḍa is perhaps the same as gula, meaning a ball projected by a lever (tula). In the Matsya Purāṇa ayoguḍa stands for a bullet of iron.⁴¹

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³⁹ Ch. 149. v. 8.

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⁴⁰ Vana Parva, 42.5.

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⁴¹ Ch. 153. v. 133.

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In the Epics again aurva figures as a fire-arm.⁴² Aurvāgni means subterranean fire, the invention of which was probably attributed to the sage Aurva. It cannot be taken seriously as a fire-arm and may fitly find a place among the mythical weapons of offence. We have spoken already of nārāca, and it is worthy of note that the term appears side by side with nālikā in the Epics.⁴³ Evidently they refer to two distinct types of metallic arrows. The nālikas were missiles often barbed. In later days the term meant guns.

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⁴² Mhb., Vana Parva, Ch. 82.

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⁴³ Rāmā., VI. 45.23; Mhb., Bhīṣma Parva, 106. 33.

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The Śukranītisāra uses nālika in this sense and speaks of two kinds of nālikas, the large and the small. The latter was used by horsemen and footmen. The bigger variety which had no wooden stock was carried on wheels. The agnicūrṇa or gunpowder was composed of 4 to 6 parts of salt-petre, one part of sulphur, and one part of charcoal of arka, sruhi and other trees burnt in a pit and reduced to powder. Here is certain evidence of the ancient rockets giving place to actual guns in war-fare. From the description of the composition of gunpowder, a later date is ascribed to the composition of the Śukranīti which cannot stand close scrutiny. Be this as it may, the conclusion is unmistakable that guns were largely in use even not far after the beginning of the Christian era. In the Vāsiṣṭha Dhanurveda, a later work, nārāca, nālika, śataghni figure as fire-arms.⁴⁴

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⁴⁴ See also Viracintāmaṇi Dhanurveda quoted in the Lakṣaṇa-prakāśa, p. 282.

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A word may be said about the śataghna or śataghni. Śukra and Vasiṣṭha use this word in the sense of cannon. But it is doubtful whether in earlier times, for instance in the epoch of the Epics, it meant a cannon. Possibly it did not. In its literal sense it meant a machine able to kill a hundred men. It seems to have been a heavy column of stone or timber fixed with iron spikes on the ramparts of fortresses. Kauṭalya refers to it in this sense only. The ancient fortresses of Ayodhyā and Laṅkā had these machines provided on their ramparts.⁴⁵ There is the authority of the Harivaṃśa to indicate that there were smaller types of these machines carried in the hand. But these types do not find mention in the later military literature; the term used there unmistakably refers to cannon. It can therefore be safely concluded that these weapons, guns, and cannon were popular in India at the best before the advent of the Portuguese towards the close of the 15th century.

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⁴⁵ See P. C. Dharma: The Rāmāyaṇa, Polity, Madras (1941), pp. 72-73.

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