David,
No I did not mean to imply that the next picture shows a kris. As I have pointed out, my knowledge on krises is not so, that I neither can nor will i imply anything when it comes to krises. True we must not forget the artistic touch, but Robert shows details from the stone sculptures which are very destinct, so i think the artist has kept a close to the truce as possible - at least here.
The story goes that the Indians, in the very early times build very big ships, and sailed to many places, the Spicy islands, Japan, China, east Africa, Arabia and other countries. Later they seem to have lost the knowledge of building such big ships. They traded with the Romans, Arabs and many others. I don’t know if the story is true, but they have found a Roman ship off the Spanish coast in the Mediterranean, which could take a cargo of 400 tons, and the ship was from the second century, so it is not impossible.
Maybe krises could be found in south India, is sounds possible, but it makes me wonder why katars were not found outside India. For someone who knew how to use it, it is a very powerful weapon, and the Indians, had no doubt contact with people in far away places, so why was the katar not ‘accepted’ when the Indians, at least to a certain extend accepted weapons from other countries?
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