Another weapon in art from the AMNH

[Mark]

This find was very exciting, because it shows a dagger almost exactly like those found in Pyu sites in Burma (third & fourth photos). The Pyu were a Tibeto-Burman people related to the Bama, but preceding them in Burma by several centuries. The statue is identified as being possibly of Shiva, from Bihar in India (which is in the northeast of the country), and from the Gupta Period, 6th century.

The fifth photo is a detail of another statue of Shiva, but from Kashmir and a later period (end ot the 8th century). In it we see a more typical bichwa or chilanum.

While it is unwise to read too much into a single sample, I'm intrigued by this Bihar knife that so closely resembles the Pyu dagger. Is the 6th century Bihar knife the forerunner of the Pyu dagger? Or is it rather the precoursor to the one shown in the Kashmiri statue? Or both?