Archaeology and the Mahabharata (Study)

by Gouri Lad | 1978 | 132,756 words

This study examines the Mahabharata from an archaeological perspective. The Maha-Bbharata is an ancient Indian epic written in Sanskrit—it represents a vast literary work with immense cultural and historical significance. This essay aims to use archaeology to verify and contextualize the Mahabharata's material aspects by correlating epic elements w...

Part 12 - Weapons during Phase I (Pre-600 B.C.)

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The Mahabharata war preserves certain very archaic features. In this respect it is very close to the Vedic mode of warfare. Thus the bow is the weapon supreme in both the Vedas and the Mahabharata and every knight is, first and foremost, a great archer. The mightiest of the Epic, who controlled the fate of the war, Bhisma, Drona, Karna and Arjuna, representing 3 generations of Ksatriyas, have all become immortal as great bowmen. With the bow came the swift chariot. These two coupled together made the path of Aryan colonisation smooth and victorious. The Mahabharata preserves the same spirit where the chariot-riding archer rules supreme on the battlefield. The foot-soldiers, the horses, the elephants are there merely to make the war look like a war, to fill the vast space of the battlefield of Kuruksetra and to be massacred mercilessly by the car-riding knight weilding his bow with speed and precision. All the great battles in the Epic are often reduced to almost close-quarter duals between two carriding archers or else it is the archer in his vehicle against the entire army and yet he emerges unscathed and

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= 540 crowned in glory. The whole picture is rather lop-sided and unfair, sometimes a little incongrous and unture as if mock battles are being staged with behind scene planning. the But the incongruity, the touch of falsehood, the exaggerated heroism are all part of the poet's excessive zeal in trying to superimpose the scenario of the later empirical wars on the original small-scale intertribal warfare. The poets have remoulded the equipment of the war with subtle ease, but they could not, fortunately, touch the very spirit of the heroic age. "This tradition is indeed earlier than the Buddhist period. Memories of old bygone days fire the imagination of the poet and painter; time does not efface them, for they are embedded in the thoughts of the people through popular song and story, in the form of the living Epic". (Singh 1965:36). Another archaic feature of the Mahabharata is the prominent position of the gada or the mace. A The weapon Thenceforth it appears to have been almost exclusive to the Epics. There is no mention of it in the earlier Vedic literature, nor in the later Pali works, while in the Arthasastra it has been reduced to merely a missile weapon (II.18). hardly plays any role in the later warfare. What was it that made the gada such a popular weapon with the Epic heroes and how was it that it lost its celebrated position in later times ? The mace was an important weapon of all primitive

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= 541 people. In India itself our first introduction to the mace comes from the Indus valley cities. Many maceheads have been uncovered at Mohenjo-daro as well as at Harrapa. They are generally of stone a very closegrained limestone, sandstone, alabaster or marble, normally lentoid in shape but sometimes also round and pear-shaped (Singh 1965:90). They generally have an hour-glass type of perforation bored from both the ends (Wheeler 1968:76), through which was inserted the shaft made of either wood or hide. Then they were lashed all over firmly and securely to the shaft with leather thongs of lashings of raw-hide which became taut on drying (Marshall 1931: II. 461). The other ancient people in India who used similar stone mace-heads were the pit and mud-hut dwellers of Burzaom (IAR 1961-62:21), the mesolithic inhabitants of Langhnaj, the blade and burin users of Renigunta and the Chalcolithic settlers of Navdatoli (Sankalia et al 1971:329), Ahar (Sankalia et al 1969:212) and Chandoli (IAR 1960-61:27). Thus the mace has a wide range in antiquity from as early as 2500 B.C. Outside India too it was universal in the ancient world from neolithic Sardinia, Causasus, and Daunbe to early and pre-dynastic Egypt and early Sumeria where it was extensively used (Marshall 1931: II.461). In these early societies the mace was used as an effective weapon of tremendous crushing power mostly against wild animals by a hunting people or

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= 542 by merchants and traders having to traverse the forest or at best by householders protecting their property (Mackay 1938:399). It was no doubt a weapon of individual protection, heavy and somewhat clumsy to be carried into a battle. Even today it is not uncommon in parts of North India to carry lathis 6-7 ft. long with an iron ring at one end, the blows of which can be fatal for man and beast alike (Sankalia et al 1971:327). The transformation of the mace from a primitive weapon to a more sophisticated war-oriented weapon took place probably with its transformation from stone to metal. Now it was smaller and more compact but not any less effective. The Mahabharata gadas are all distinctly metal ones. The first of this kind was found at Harrappa (Vats 1938: 1.367), a round copper mace-head, small but heavy enough to be effective, and with many cuts and marks on the surface. Another copper-bronze mace-head was found at Chanhu-daro in late Harrapan or Jhukar phase and probably belonged to a people foreign to the Harrapan culture. Wheeler has compared it to Persian examples of the 2 nd millenium B.C. (1959:61), while Piggott sites specific parallels from Luristan, Hissar and Sialk (cemetry B) (AI 4 1947-48:38-40). These are the only two examples of metal mace-heads in India. It is strange that with the comming of iron, a more cheaper and sturdy metal than copper or bronze, their number does not increase, but on the

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contrary they totally dissappear from the scene altogether. This is what exactly happens in literature too. From 600 B.C. onwards when iron weapons were proliferating with great speed, both the literary annals as well as the archaeological ones are peculiarly devoid of the presence of the mace. It is as if the gada had played out its role by the time the 'Heroic Age' was over and no one had any use of it later. The evidence of the Mahabharata is very crucial in the context of the advent of iron. When the Epic constantly speaks of the gada as "saikya" it leaves no doubt that it was made of iron or tempered steel (saikya) (III.157.64; V.50.28%; VI.50.104; VII.138.17; IX.31.35). The epithet is also applied to a sword in the Mahabharata (V.47. 97) as well as the Jatakas (VI.449). We know from Ktesias that swords of Indian make, made of the finest steel had become famous throughout the ancient world around the 5 th century B.C. Quintus Curtius too refers to the gift of 30 lbs. of valued steel by Porus to Alexander at Taksasila (Singh 1965:102). Thus these iron or steel gadas probably hark back to 600-500 B.C. But in that case it is truly unfortunate and a bit unreal that not a single specimen has been uncovered anywhere in India. There is another possibility thatby the 4 th century B.C. the use of the gada was restricted to a few tribes and a few people those only, who relied more on their physical strength and stamina, their personal vigour and brute force and on close hand-to-

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544 hand fights. This mode of fighting was effective in small tribal battles but not in larg-scale ambitious wars fought for empires. Thus there were the Sibis clad in animal hides and the Mallas (Malloi to the Greek) of North West Punjab. who fought Alexander with maces and lost (Mujumdar 1960:200, 219). It is thus possible to believe that the mace was an important weapon so long as the tribal set-up survived, but was pushed into a secondary role and thence into oblivion when the tribes gave way to kingdoms and kingdoms to empires. The process had already begun as early as the 6 th century B.C. in Eastern India with the rise of Magadhan Power but it was Alexander who dealt the final blow to the surviving remanants of the system in North-West India in the 4 th century B.C. We may thus probably be justified to look for the lost 'Heroic Age' of the Epic in the setting of the small tribal states and confederacies prior to 600 B.C. There is a widespread confusion in the minds of many scholars as regards the mace and the club. Most of them tend to equate the two but this hardly seems plausible in the face of literary and sculptural evidence. The word 'vajra', a peculiar weapon of Indra is generally understood as a club. But Vedic scholars like Keith and Macdonell (1912: 1.61) are emphatic in their denial that the early Aryans knew the use of the club. They find no word in the Vedas which would mean a club and understand the vajra to be the thunderbolt of the rain-and-storm god Indra. But as pointed out by Dr. Singh

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= 545 (1965:96) the description of the vajra in the Vedas does not easily lend itself to the interpretation thunderbolt. A few other terms like 'vighana' in the Taittiriya Samhita (III.2.4.1) and 'drughana' and 'pinaka' in the Atharvaveda (1.27.2; VII.28.I) also seem to denote some kind of clubs. As noted earlier the Mahabharata equates the 'pinaka' with the gada. But just as the pinaka was a popular weapon of Rudra in the Mahabharata so also was the vajra. Could it then be that the three of them, the vajra, the pinaka and the gada were one and the same weapon or at least one of the same kind? If this is so then the Epic gada has its proto-type in the Vedic vajra and pinaka. However as far as a regular club is concerned the Mahabharata makes a clear-cut distinction between the musala and the gada. The difference was quite obvious. The gada was basically a 2 piece weapon with a solid metal head, tied with leather-thongs to a wooden shaft, while the musala was a completely wooden weapon, at best capped in a metal head or strapped in metal bands. There were many other crushing weapons in the Mahabharata but all of them were missile weapons, thrown at the enemy, and not hand weapons like the gada. In sculptural representations too there is an The mace easy distinction between the mace and the club. has a long handle, almost slender, mounted with a big bulbous head, while the club is a long tapering wooden rod

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with a rounded end. It is the club or musala that appears h more and more often on Kusana coins, on the famous stone statue of Kaniska and in the Nagarjunkonda and the 546 Amaravati sculptures, whereas the gada came to be associated exclusively with Visnu and became more and more stylized. h The club in Kusana sculptures or at Nagarjunkonda rests against the seat of the king and very often he places his hand on it, as if to lean or take support (Agrawala 1952: 39-40; Naik 1941: 280). It is thus a royal weapon. But it is highly doubtful if the king rode into battle with it. In all likelihood it appears on the sculptures as a kind of a royal symbol like a rod or a scepter, symbolizing the king's right to punish and to rule.

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