Minerals and Metals in Ancient India v1.c17.s1.t3: Harpoons
Minerals and Metals in Ancient India v1.c17.s1.t3
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Harpoons
v1.c17.s1.t3.1
The Megdalenian harpoons of bone have a shape similar to that of our type. But these are so much removed from the Indian specimens, both in point of time and place, that it is difficult to imagine any relationship between the two. Again Heine-Geldern (1936, 1937) has drawn attention to some arrowheads with simple barbs from Transcaucasian, Talish and Lusistan which he thinks may have given rise to the Indian harpoons. This may be over-presumption. Barbed arrowheads are known from several ancient sites in the world, but surely they are quite distinct from the harpoons, the shape and method of hafting of which are fundamentally different. This harpoons has a strong medial rib and a long tapering blade. The middle part has three pairs of finely-pointed incurved barbs of cylindrical section. At the junction of the barbed portion and the tang there is a pair of knobs of which one is perforated. The perforation or ‘eye’ was evidently used for passing a cord through in the process of tying the harpoon on to its shaft. The implement was no doubt cast, although there may have been some subsequent hammering at the blade-end. (Lal, 1951: 32, 25)
v1.c17.s1.t3.2
But what may be worth noting here is that certain implements depicted in the archaic cave-paintings of central India plateau bear a close resemblance to the harpoons. For example, a cave called Ghormangur in the Mirzapur District, U.P. contains a scene of rhinoceros hunt, wherein six persons attacking the animal from various sides are armed with long, harpoon-headed poles. In another cave, Likhunia in the same District is portrayed a man who is about to thrust a multiple-barbed spear into the body of a sambhar. Whether the implements represented in these paintings were of copper or bone or even wood and stone combined cannot be precisely determined, but whatever the raw material, the fundamental conception is indeed the same. It is, therefore, not unlikely that the copper harpoons of the Gangetic basin may have had some relationship with those portrayed in the Central Indian paintings. (Lal, 1951: 35)