ANCIENT Indian Weapons (B.C.)

[Steven C.]

Hey guys, for a story I'm working on (I'm a film school student, but I'm simply working on a story for basically any form of media I can put it in) I need to know about ancient (not medieval like Tulwars or katars) weapons of India.

Without revealing too much one of the characters in my story is an Indian warrior (very similar to a ninja or sulsa type assassin, one of the ideas my story uses is the rather convincing theory that Chinese/Japanese martial arts originated in ancient India, which would include ninjutsu, which was brought to Japan by Chinese, so eventually its very likely that it goes back to India from China).

Anyways the era I need information on is anything from around 1200 B.C. to around time of Alexander the Great's invasions. I need example of Indian weapons from this time, especially swords and melee weaponry).

Alot of weapons I was thinking of using, I can't find out if they were around during that period though.. examples are:

Urumi - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urumi

Khukuri , Chakram, bagh-nakh, katar.

Please help! Internet is not helping at all!

[ALEX]

Steven,
The early version of Urumi-shaped sword often appears on ancient (8000-1000 BC) Babylonian and Mesopotamian (Sumerian) stamp cylinders/rolls, which were used just like modern stamps to make impressions on clay tablets.
Originally it was of a solid, not flexible/coiled type, and it is quite possible that later on the same shape was adopted and modified in Asia and/or India.

http://www.britannica.com/eb/art-512...rticleTypeId=1

http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/ho/02/...41.160.192.htm

Good luck with your project.

[Steven C.]

Eh.. how is it an urumi if it's not flexible? And when did the flexible urumi appear?

Also people, please I need more help than that..

[ALEX]

Steven,
My comment was based purely on shape similarities. I just do not know much about these weapons. Hopefully someone else who does will post.

[Jim McDougall]

Hi Steven,
Most of the weapons discussed here are more focused on those actually available to collectors, and examples of historical periods relatively recent compared to that of your project. Many of the references we often refer to will have some basic information pertaining to ancient weapons such as,
"Indian Arms and Armour" G.N.Pant ; "The Indian Sword" P. Rawson ; "The Glossary of the Construction, Decoration and Use of Arms and Armor" , Stone and certainly a few others. Most of these are often somewhat difficult to obtain and can be expensive so for your purposes possibly interlibrary loan would be best.
Also, while often somewhat elementary in detail on weaponry, the Osprey series such as "Man at Arms" can often be most helpful in establishing good overview in study of historical periods and the armies of the times. There are excellent titles among them that describe and colorfully illustrate many ancient armies including India, Persia and so on. These can be found online and are quite reasonable as they are paperback monographs.

An excellent source for specific questions once you have established certain weapon forms and timeframe would be the arms and armor department at the Metropolitan Museum in New York. As far as the martial arts application pertaining to weapons, the historical data in these would be best found in organizations specific to those disciplines.

Your project sounds intriguing and hopefully these ideas might be of some help. I wish I could offer more detail on the weapons themselves, but the topic is quite broad and most data available is as Alex has noted, mostly applied typologically and from iconographic sources.

Best wishes and good luck on your project,
Jim

[Joe]

These may be akin to what you're looking for, but I don't think that they're quite as ancient as you want.