Talismanic Devices and Imbuements on Islamic Arms

[Ibrahiim al Balooshi]

Hello Jim I need to add what I ought to have gotten round to yesterday but the day job intervened !!

The thrust of my point involving indian talismani work is made toward floral decoration on Mughal hilts below.

The thread is vital to our understanding of such influence although because of the destruction of Dara Shikoh and members of his family plus countless artifacts weapons and written work and art the remnants are almost impossible to put together into a focused picture of exactly what happened.

please see http://www.vikingsword.com/vb/showth...ht=dara+shikoh and apologies as there are Talisman all over it thus it needs a quiete read through from the start. I will deliberately place the entire post relevant at #24 where the text goes into the uses of precious and semi precious stones etc in this regard.

Please see http://www.vikingsword.com/vb/showth...ht=dara+shikoh



#24 TALISMANIC FLORAL DECORATION ON INDIAN WEAPONS.



Quote"Hardstones, gems and ivory in Mughal India.

Hardstone marquetry is a long-standing local tradition. The refined technique of inlay, which the Persian and Mughal chroniclers refer to as parchîn kârî, and which was brought to an almost unbelievable peak of excellence by the imperial stoneworkers during the reign of Shah Jahan, consisted of setting in marble or sandstone thin sections of hard or semi-hard stones that had been cut with the greatest of care and fashioned in the shape of tendrils and floral arabesques. The Frenchman François Bernier , who lived in India between 1656 and 1668, describes the mausoleum built by the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan (1628-1658) for his wife Mumtâz Mahal, in a letter dated 1663 to Monsieur de La Mothe Le Vayer: he speaks with great enthusiasm of the mausoleum’s perfect architecture and of its opulent interior decoration, floral motifs in white marble inlaid with jade, jasper and other sorts of precious stones.

The hardstones used in the decoration of the Taj Mahal, as well as in palaces and imperial buildings all over India and in the surrounding regions, included yellow amber from Burma, lapis-lazuli from Afghanistan, nephrite from Chinese Turkestan, and carnelian, agate, amethyst, jasper, green beryl, chalcedony, onyx and coral from the different regions of the huge Indian sub-continent.

At the Mughal court precious and semi-precious stones were also used to highlight imperial tableware, writing desks, mirrors, huqqa, weapons, royal saddles and even gold and silver gem-studded thrones. Rock-crystal and jade, hardstones which could only be worked with diamond dust, were particularly appreciated at the Mughal court. Objects fashioned in the second half of the seventeenth century by Mughal ateliers or karkhâna from jade – or to be more precise from the nephrite and jadeite imported from Kashgar and from Khotan – such as boxes and pen boxes, huqqa stands and mouthpieces, dagger hilts and archer’s thumb rings, bowls and cups, are particularly remarkable for their delicate inlays of precious stones, predominantly emeralds, diamonds, rubies and spinels, set in gold and forming stylized floral motifs.

Jade was thought to contain Talismanic virtues such as the power of prolonging life – and indeed even that of ensuring immortality; it was also considered to favor success on the battlefield – hence its name of “stone of victory”. It was therefore considered the most appropriate material for the manufacture of ornate arms symbolizing victory. The hilts of these ornate weapons which were only used for ceremonial purposes were often carved in the shape of the head of a horse, a ram, an antelope, a lion or a falcon, always with a quite remarkable and moving expressivity. This repertoire of animal motifs is known to have existed as early as the second half of the reign of Jahangir, and became particularly important under the emperor Shah Jahan.

Ivory carving was an important craft in ancient India. It was to be equally appreciated at the Mughal court, where it was used in the making and ornamentation of chests and caskets, as well as dagger hilts, flasks and powder horns. The latter were given a lively, zoomorphic décor, in which different birds and animals were intermingled – elephants, lions, monkeys, buffaloes, rams, antelopes and hares, as well as composite and imaginary animals. Hunt scenes predominate in these exuberant animal scenes, derived from the iconographic repertoire of Mughal miniatures. Similar scenes also appear in the décor of late sixteenth and early seventeenth century Mughal carpets. Some of the ivory powder horns were clearly gilded and embellished with colors, and the eyes of the animals were occasionally encrusted with amber and precious or semi-precious stones.

The floral and plant motifs predominate in the decorative repertoire of Mughal India. The combination of the naturalistic yet subtly stylized treatment of Mughal flowers, together with their balanced and symmetrical arrangement, is emblematic of Mughal taste in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when the floral motif became a leitmotiv that permeated all the arts of the court (textiles and decorative arts, arts of the book) and even architecture. This fascination with the floral motif can be traced back to the reign of the Emperor Jahangir. It originated during a journey made by Jahangir in 1620 to Kashmir, a country where the emperor was enchanted by the variety and profusion of the flowers which grew there, and which he was subsequently wont to describe as “a garden where spring reigns eternally”. During this trip the monarch was accompanied by one of the great masters of the imperial atelier of painting, the animal painter Ustâd Mansûr Nâdir al’Asr, who, at the request of the sovereign, executed more than a hundred flower studies, of which only three precious examples still survive.

This poetic delight in the exuberant blossoming flowers of Kashmir was reinforced by the discovery of European herbals brought to the Mughal court by Jesuit missionaries and agents of the East India Company.

The herbals were to exert considerable influence on Mughal flower painting, on the precision with which they were drawn, on the extreme care taken with the representation of botanical details, and on the presence of butterflies and dragonflies fluttering above the corollas and leaves, which Mughal artists, who were familiar with Persian works, often replaced with small meandrous-shaped Chinese clouds (t’chi), which were considered in China to be the vehicles of the gods, and which became a decorative motif in Persian art. As so pertinently noted by M. L. Swietochowski, the regular arrangement of flowers and bouquets in the margins of Mughal miniatures is reminiscent of the ornamentation of a number of Books of Hours from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and perhaps even more so of the borders of Flemish engravings on religious subjects".Unquote

I found the entire post a huge subject and the introduction of herbals via the Jesuit missionaries with the EIC bringing inspiration to Persian and Moghul artists with Chinese motifs very interesting. That these motif became Talisman is equally interesting and must be shown as such on this thread as vital to our understanding of Talisman on Ethnographic weapons.

[Jens Nordlunde]

Jim, the poppy stands for a lot of things, like it was said to be a herb of Saturn, or a symbol of both peace and death, and, and....
When we study the different flowers and animals we tend to give them a symbolic meaning, and maybe it is right. or maybe it is not right, as some say when used they are only decoration.
We do, however, know that the Indians at that time were very superstitious, so I find it likely that they believed in this things, just like they did in countries around them, and like they did even before BC.
Their different gods had different weapons, plants and animals attached to them, and the Indians honoured them, so why no use them for decoration?

[Jim McDougall]

Ibrahiim and Jens, these are outstanding responses and insights into this area of talismanic applications of floral and vegetal images in Indian decorative arts. As Ibrahiim has described these kinds of properties extend to the use of precious stones as well.
I know it took him a great deal of time to prepare this detail and am very grateful.

Jens , I know you have spent more time than anyone on these topics over many years, and so much attention to specific cases as you catalogued items in your collection. It is an extremely broad topic to address in general terms. It seems the poppy had some likely application toward drug oriented context.

From what I was able to find, this type of decoration seems to have become popular during the reign of Janhangir as Ibrahiim has noted. He is described as 'pleasure loving' and this appears to suggest the drug orientation. The use of floral designs carried forward with Shah Jahan as well as the very important Dara Shikoh.


As you mention many of the plants and animals also had celestial meanings associated with the gods and as such were applied to decoration on Hindu arms as beautifully described by Elgood. These kinds of decoration were often of course adopted syncretically by the Mughals, just as they added Chinese themes and European from the grimoires and herbals encountered from EIC import mentioned.