Chapter 14 - Weapons

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.
Phase II (600-200 B.C.)
The arrival of iron on the scene brought about a
total revolution in all walks of life, but particularly so
in warfare and weapons. With the manufacturing costs
reduced, tools and weapons of metal now became more and
more commonplace and more and more specialized, with newer
and newer shapes coming into being. But this revolution
did not come about in one stroke, it was a gradual change
towards progress and prosperity. It took some length of
time to tame the new metal, hard to work but more useful and
avalaible in plenty.
a
It is now generally accepted by archeologists