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 14 - Weapons during Phase III (200 B.C. 200 A.D.)
Phase III covers a period after 200 B.C. It does not have any new weapons to its credit but its stamp is indelibly marked on the decorations and ornamentation of the various weapons. There are two types of ornamentation gold and one with jewels and precious stones. a one with Unfortunately literary descriptions of richly ornamented weapons draw a complete blank on the archeological scene. No such weapon has so far been unearthed anywhere in India. But we need not immediately jump to the conclusion that they were fictitious, beautiful illusions conjured up by the poet's imagination. Ancient sites outside India, in Egypt, Iraq and Iran have brought forth some exquisitely ornamented weapons while the treasures of the nomadic Scythian graves in Central Asia are unparalleled. It is therefore not unlikely that such weapons existed in India too, but somehow disappeared without a trace, one of the primary reasons
being that we have no royal graves which would preserve them intact for posterity. We have to, therefore, rely almost entirely on literary descriptions, at times aided and substantiated by sculptural representations. Ornamentation with jewels (ratna) and precious stones (mani) was on a very limited scale. It was done as incrustation on metal and was possible only where the weapon was a metal one. Again it had to be restricted to those parts of the weapon which were not directly in contact with the body. Thus it were mainly the gold handles of a sakti, a sword and an ankusa that were embellished with jewels and stones. Then there was the gada with its bulbous metal head and the gold-washed armour plates of copper, bronze and iron. Wooden weapons like the bow which were backed with gold sheets were also likewise adorned. The favorite amongst the gems was beryl (vaidurya), but corals (vidruma or pravala) and diamonds (vajra) too are mentioned once. 562 A detailed discussion on gems and gems-incrustation has already been undertaken in a previous chapter (VII). The conclusions are valid here too. Most of the gems were introduced to literature from the Mauryan period onwards when trade and commerce with Cylon opened up and prospered. During the early period these gems were strung loosely on a thread or on a gold chain. The art of gem incrustation on metal came much later, an introduction of the Scytho-
= 563 Parthians at Taksasila around the 1 st century A.D. It was a great favorite with them. the Mahabharata must belong to a later stage of Epic development Therefore all such weapons in late not as weapon types but late by reason of their ornamentation. It must, however, be pointed out, right at this stage, that it is not as if each and every piece of a particular weapon type was ornamental. It was actually, very often, only a single piece in a thousand which carried the ornamentation, and it was only this piece that was a late insertion and not the others. Thus there was only one bow (VII.143.11), one gada (IX.8.25) and one sword (VII.47. 37) which had the gem-incrustation, all other specimens of the same class lacking this lavish touch. It is the same story with the armour plates only once are they described as incrustated with beryls (1.27.41). With the sakti and the ankusa, however, gem incrustated handles are not so rare (VI.107.11; VII.13.75; 108.20; IX.16.37-46; VIII.14.47), but not so very common either. On the whole weapons with this form of ornamentation were rare in the Mahabharata, so that they easily stand out in the vast multitude. Ornamentation with gold was comparatively very widespread as it was varied. It consisted of i) gold shafts for spears and javelins like the sakti, tomara and prasa; ii) gold handles for ankusas and swords;
= 564 iii) gold strips, wires and bands for bow-staves, gada, musala and parigha; iv) gold chains and gold network for the mace and d the sheils;B v) tiny golden bells, kinkinis, for the sakti, sataghni, the wooden and leather sheilds and the leather sword-scabbards; vi) vii) gold-embossing or gold-carving for the leather thongs of the gada and the ivory handles of the swords; beautiful motifs cut out from gold sheets and stuck to bow-staves, quivers, sheilds and armour coats. Besides these specific decorations "gold bedecked" is a constant epithet of many a weapons. The The most interesting of these golden decorations are the beautiful motifs cut out from gold sheets and fixed like applique work to the exterior of weapons. type of weapons to which they were glued, bows, quivers, sheilds and armour, were those that remained constantly with the warrior and could not generally be lost in the melee like arrows, spears and such others. were of many kinds These motifs
= 565 i) ii) iii) iv) Geometrical motifs e.g. concentric circles, tiny dots, replicas of the eye; Astronomical motifs e.g. stars, planets, the sun and the moon, particularly the half-moon or the crescent; Floral motifs e.g. lotuses and other flowers, not specified;B Animal motifs e.g. tigers, elephants, deer, insects like the cocheneal (indragopaka) and the grasshopper (salabha), fish and some birds not specified. With one exception these decorations are entirely restricted to weapons. The exception is Krsna's chariot described in the most lavish terms in the Udyogaparva (V.81.16-18). Certain motifs like the fish, the deer, and the birds, occur only here while others like the sun and the crescent are common. Another rather interesting feature of these decorations is that as far as weapons are concerned they are entirely restricted to the Virataparva (IV.38). None of the other Parvas particularly the war Parvas which are so replete with weapons ever speak of these applique motifs. The only one conspicuous exception is that of the satacandra motif which appears on the sheilds and the leather bucklers
= throughout the Epic. In the absence of these decorative motifs, in all but the Virataparva, Krsna's chariot all glitters with them, stands out as a clear case of later interpolation in the Udyogaparva. On the whole, there are hardly a few places in the entire Mahabharata where these decorations are alluded to, and considering that it is an Epic devoted to a mighty war it is a rather poor show. There is, therefore, no difficulty to pin-point them as later additions or better still later embellishments. But the question is how late ? Let us first consider the satacandra motif for it is the only one that occurs throughout the Epic and was immensely popular for the sheilds, so much so that the sheilds came to be identified with the design itself. We are extremely fortunate that sheilds bearing exactly such a design are preserved for us on the painted walls of Ajanta. ▲ square sheild in Cave VII is shown exquisitely decorated with the sun and the moon pattern (Dhavalikar 1973:112). The pattern is a series of crescents each topped with a little circle. It is not possible to count the exact number of crescents and it may not be exactly 100. But then the Mahabharata also mentions sheilds with only as many as 8 crescents (astacandra). Besides it is not possible for a painter to be realistic to the minutest details, on the small surface-space 566
= * 567 available to him. What is important is the graphic vindication of a design which appears so often in literature. The paintings in this particular cave are dated to around 455-510 A.D. However, at least 5-6 centuries earlier, around the 1 st century B.C. or so, an exactly similar pattern appears at Sanchi also, but on cloth banners and not on sheilds. The sheilds at Sanchi are decorated only with bands, vertical, oblique and crossed (Dhavalikar 1965: 60-61). But there are at least two examples where cloth banners carry the crescentic design those hanging down a from umbrellas atop/caitya and another held afloat in both the hands by a flag bearer walking in a procession ( Marshall 1940? : II, PI. XXX c). Thus it is almost certain that by the 1 st century B.C. the crescent design was very much for other things if not for sheilds. in vogue, There are other opinions on the subject too. We have it from Arrian, the Greek chronicler that the sheilds used by the Indian soldiers in the 4 th century B.C. were strictly utilatarian and severely plain (Date 1929:24). But the same Arrian reports that the metal armour worn by king Porus was embellished with gold and silver (Chakravarty 1941:177), though he does not give any details of design and pattern. Dr V. S. Agrawala on the other hand has cited Gupta and Sassanian parallels of 4 th-5 th century A.D. to explain a passage from Bana's Kadambari, which refers to
=0 the 'satasurya' and 'satabindu' patterns on the armour of Prince Candrapida. He compares them favorably to the exactly similar patterns appearing on the armour coats in the Virataparva. The similarity does not end here, but also includes the 'satavarta' pattern which appears on armour coats both in the Mahabharata and the Kadambari (Agrawala 1958:112-113, footnotes 1-2). 568 The picture that emerges shows that by the 4 th century B.C. precious metals like gold and silver were being used to embellish metal armour if not other metal weapons. By the 2 nd 1 st century B.C. a pattern depicting a series of crescents topped with circles, refered to as the sun G and the - moon pattern by scholars was evolved, appearing mostly on ceremonial banners and was tremendously appealing to designers. It was only centuries later, in the 4 th 5 th century A.D. that it appears on sheilds too, but it is quite likely that such sheilds were known much earlier although at present there is no sculptural or painted representation from an earlier period. The Mahabharata seems to be passing exactly through this phase for it is bristling with references to the 'candra', 'ardhacandra', 'astacandra' and particularly the 'satacandra' pattern which decorated the leather sheilds of swordsmen. It is the most dominant pattern in the Epic appearing in almost each and every Parva. By the 6 th century A.D. or these patterns became frozen and stylized into various so,
geometric compositions e.g. 'satabindu', 'satavarta', 'satasurya' and 'sataksi' in which the number 100 appeared with a monotonous repitition. That these stylized patterns were late in the Mahabharata too is obvious since they are entirely restricted to the 38 th adhyaya of the Virataparva and do not appear anywhere else in the Epic. Their ad verbatim parallels in Bana's Kadambari can push their date further down to the 7 th century A.D. Again they seem to have been confined to armour-coats both in the Mahabharata as well as in the Kadambari, understandably so because no other weapon can provide so much designing surface for a pattern running into hundreds. The floral and the animal motifs are equally interesting not only for their artistic antecedants but also for their chronological implications. We are again singularly fortunate that life-size replicas in stone of a sword and a club (musala) ornamented with animal forms have been preserved for us. Both are part of a huge h headless stone statue of the Kusana emperor Kaniska found at Mathura and dated to the 1 st century A.D. This sword has a long hilt, originally of ivory or jade, decorated Clube on top with a swan's head, while the mace 3'-5" long is strengthened with 5 metal bands, the lower-most of which is decorated with a fish-tailed makara head which like the bands must have originally been of metal (Agrawala 1952: 39). The appearance of these ornamental animal motifs 569
570 wrought in costly materials like gold, ivory and jade on weapons belonging to a powerful emperor suggest that they were generally reserved for royal weapons. h h Again their association with the Kusana emperor immediately raises the question whether they were wrought under foreign influences? They most probably were. There is ample evidence to show that the art of the Kusanas or of the Sakas and the Parthians who preceded them and of the other nomads who inhabited the Central Asian steppes and Chinese Turkestan was very much dominated by animal forms, wrought in different mediums but particularly in dazzling gold. They can be seen everywhere in the gorgeous assemblage of Scythian and nomadic grave-goods, on ornaments, garments, utensils, horse-gear poletops etc., but above all on weapons of all sorts, on sword-hilts and axe-handles, on metal plates for sheilds, quivers, scabbards and bow-cases, and on corslets and helmets. Animals like lions, tigers, lynxes, stags, ibexes and little hares alternate with eagles, griffins and fishes (Phillips 1965). With this rich legacy behind there can be no two questions about the source of inspiration for Kaniska's weapons. The Indian artist and metal-worker was not slow in picking up these new trends brought in the wake of a new ruling elite of Sakas, Parthians and Kusanas, but it is a typically Indian fauna with elephants, deers, crocodiles, swans and insects like the Indragopaka and the
Salabha. = 571 Substituting typically indegenous animals and birds was no problem for the Indian artist. He had before him some beautifully executed pieces in stone from Barhut, Sanchi and elsewhere. Now he had to merely try a new medium, metal, the malleable and the ductile gold. Another rich source of lively faunal forms were probably the early silver punch marked coins, issued by various authorities over half a millenium, from 600 to 100 B.C. The punched symbols include fishes of different kinds, elephants in various poses, humped bulls, cows, horses, antelopes, gazelles, stages, rhinos, lions, monkeys, hares, dogs, peacocks, cranes, and other birds, snakes, scorpions, little lady-bird like insects, tortoises and frogs (Smith 1972:131; Allen 1936: 297-309). Thus there was no derth of animal forms. They were already there punched on silver. Now they had to be worked in gold, gold plaques and gold repousse work. Certain other of these punched symbols too are interesting. There are lotuses which are upturned and hanging from the stalks and lotus-buds, as well as many geometrical and astronomical symbols. There are circles and circular dots, sun and stars, solar symbols like concentric rings with dots outside and crescents in various combinations. The occurence of the crescent is suggestive but is nothing compared to the frequency with which it
= 572 occurs on Sassanian coins from 226-578 A.D. In fact almost all the patterns on these coins are composed of the crescent (Smith 1972: 225-229). Earlier, around the 1 st-2 nd century A.D. or so, the western Satrap the western Satrap and the Indo-Scythian and Indo-Parthian coins too depict the crescent and the star, as well as the sun, symbolized by 7 vertical strokes as the rays or simply by 7 or 8 dots (Smith 1972: 123-126: Gardener 1966 : 70 % The still earlier local coins of North India, of Ayodhya, Avanti and Kosam or the Tribal coins like those of the Arjunaya, Audumbara, Kuninda, Yaudheya, Malava and Rajanya, ranging from 150 B.C. to 100 A.D. show no such fondness for the sun-and-the-moon or the crescent-and-the-star patterns (Smith 1972:148, 166). It is a similar story with the dynastic coins of the same period, like those of the Mitras of Pancala and Kosala, of the Mathura Satraps and of the Andhras of the South (Smith 1972:186, 209). It is only on coins found at Taksasila during 350 B.C.-100 A.D. that one comes across the crescent placed atop a chaitya or of a solar pattern composed of crescents applied to a central boss (Smith 1972: 148). Taksasila was placed in an enviable position as the capital of Gandhara, a region so often described as a meeting place of cultures. In the light of the above numismatic evidence it is no surprise that Dr Agrawala (1958:112-113) sees Sassanian inspiration and influence behind the sun-and-the moon (crescent) pattern which was
= 573 very popular in the Gupta period. But as pointed out earlier the pattern already occurs at Sanchi around the 1 st century B.C. Thus even if the artistic impetus might have come from foreign sources it need not be as late as the 3 rd-4 th century A.D. To breifly summerise the situation, it can be argued that all those weapons in the Mahabharata which are heavily and intricately ornamented with gold, gems and stones, have by and large, entered the Epic somewhere between the 2 nd century B.C. and the 2 nd century A.D. in the wake of foreign invasion and foreign cultural and artistic influences. Since most of them are found mainly in the Virataparva it is not difficult to pinpoint them as probable later additions.