ANCIENT Indian Weapons (B.C.)

[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