CHAPTER X.

THE SWORD IN BABYLONIA, ASSYRIA AND PERSIA, AND ANCIENT INDIA.

Although Professor Lepsius maintained and proved that the earliest Babylonian civilisation was imported from Egypt, Biblical leanings, and the fatal practice of reading myths and mysteries as literal history, have led many moderns to hold the Plain of Shinar (Babylon) and the ancient head of the Persian Gulf to be the cradle of culture and the origin of ‘Semitism.’ We still read, ‘Babylonia stands prominent as highly civilised and densely populated at a period when Egypt was still in her youthful prime.’[649] Only in Genesis (x. 10), a document treating of later ethnology, we find mention of Erech,[650] Urukh being the oldest traditional king of Babylon. On the other hand, the Egyptians declared Belus and his subjects to have been an Egyptian colony which taught the rude Babylonians astrology and other arts. The monumental Babylonian or pre-Chaldæan Empire begins only in B.C. 2300, many a century—say a score—after Menes. The late Mr. George Smith warns us that some scholars would make the annals ‘stretch nearly two thousand years beyond that time’; but he expressly declares no approximate date can be fixed for any king before Kara-Indas (circ. B.C. 1475?–1450?). Also, ‘The great temples of Babylonia were founded by the kings who preceded the conquest by Hammu-rabi, King of the Kassi’ Arabs (sixteenth century B.C.).[651]

The Burbur or Accad inscriptions found in Babylonia do not date before B.C. 2000. Ninus, the builder of Nineveh (Fish-town) and the founder of the Assyrian dynasties, is usually placed between B.C. 2317 and 2116. An extract, by Alexander Polyhistor from the Armenian[652] Chronicle, gives, by adding the dynasties, an origin-date of 2,317 years. Berosus the priest, declares from official documents, that Babylon (God’s Gate) had regal annals 1,000 years before Solomon (B.C. 993–953), in whose reign dynastic Jewish history begins. Diodorus Siculus, quoting Ctesias (B.C. 395) makes the monarchy commence one thousand years before the Siege of Troy, which we may place about B.C. 1200. Æmilius Sura, quoted by Paterculus, proposes the date B.C. 2145, and Eusebius the Armenian 1340 years before the first Olympiad (B.C. 776), or B.C. 2116. The great kingdom of the Khita (Hittites)[653] was succeeded on the rich lowlands of the Tigris-Euphrates system by Babylon, which the Nilotes called ‘Har,’ and by the Assyrians, whom the Egyptians called Mat or the People, and hieroglyphs notice the ‘Great King of the Mat.’ But [Cuneiform] Assur[654] was little known till the decline of the Pharaohs in the Twenty-first Dynasty (B.C. 1100–966) of the priest Hirhor and his successors: one of the latter—Ramessu or Ramses XVI.—married, when dethroned, a daughter of Pallasharnes, the ‘great king of the Assyrians,’ whose capital was Nineveh,[655] and thus led to the Assyrian invasions of Egypt.[656] We may, then, safely hold with Lepsius that early Babylonian civilisation was posterior to, if not imported from, Egypt.[657]

In Babylonia a third element, the so-called ‘Turanian’ (Chinese), first emerged from Egyptian and began to take its part in the drama of progress. The almost unknown quantity has assumed magnificent proportions in the eyes of certain students, and great things are still expected from Akkadian revelation. Yet the race typified by the Chinese could have had no effect upon the learning of Egypt. ‘At the time when the genealogical tables of Genesis were written (chap. x.) those regions were still so unknown and barbarous that the writer excluded them from the civilised world.’[658]

[Heading: _THE SWORD IN ASSYRIA._]

Our factual knowledge of Mesopotamian civilisation is mostly due to the labours of the present century. Professor Grotefend of Bonn, in 1801–1803, discovered the clue to the Persian cuneiform,[659] cuneatic or arrow-headed character. This great step in advance opened the labyrinth to a host of minor explorers—Heeren (1815), Burnouf (1836), Lassen (1836–44), Hincks, who attacked the Assyrian cuneiform, and, to mention no more, Rawlinson, whose ‘Reading made Easy’ popularised the study in England. Actual exploration of the Mesopotamian ruins was begun by the learned Consul Botta (Dec. 1842) who, after failing at Koyunjik opposite Mosul, worked successfully at Khorsabad, some ten miles to the north-east: four years afterwards (Dec. 1846) the first collection of Assyrian antiquities reached the Louvre. He was followed (Nov. 8, 1845) by Mr. (now Sir) H. A. Layard, who unfortunately was not an Orientalist: his various discoveries of a stamped-clay literature, and his popular publications, introduced to the public Koyunjik and Kal’at Ninawi (Nineveh), Hillah (Babylon), Warká, Sippara (Abu Nabbah) sixteen miles south-west of Baghdad, and a variety of Biblical sites.

This ‘recovery’ of antiquities buried twenty centuries ago, and a whole literature of bas-reliefs, enables us to compare the Nile Valley, the cradle and mother-country of science and art, with its rival-successor on the Tigris-Euphrates. The original workmanship of Assyria, like that of Egypt, is still unknown; and, though she borrowed from Nile-land, her art is rather a decadence than a rise. The difference, indeed, is between the porphyries, the granites, and the syenites of Egypt, and the mud-bricks, the coarse black marbles, the rough basalts, and the undurable alabasters (a calcareous carbonate) of Interamnian Assyria. But the industrious valley-men made the best of their poor material. The ruins show the true Egyptian arch; the so-called Ionic capital, the original volutes being goats’ horns;[660] the Caryatides and Atlantes, or human figures acting columns; the cornice, corbel, and bracket; with a host of architectural embellishments to fill up plain fields. Apparently all migrated from Nile-land. Such were the winged circle, the lotus,[661] the fir-cone, and the rosette: the latter, also found by Dr. Schliemann at ‘Troy’ (p. 160), became the _rosa mystica_ of Byzantine art, and was used by Christians to denote their origin. Again, we have the key-pattern, which is Trojan and Chinese as well as Greek; the honeysuckle, a symbol of the Homa or Assyrian ‘Tree of Life’;[662] the guilloche-scroll or wave-pattern; and the meander, also miscalled the Tuscan border: the latter is common in Egypt and Cyprus, and possibly derives from the Hittite Svasti, erroneously called Svastika.[663] Assyria equally excelled in literature,[664] in painting, in sculpture, in the minor arts, and in metallurgy. She made transparent glass: a crystal lens[665] found at Nineveh accounts for the diminutive size of some inscriptions. Her sons worked enamel, and thus adorned the humble brick: like their Egyptian teachers, they were skilful in ivory-carving, in cutting cylinders of jasper and _pietra dura_, and in gem-engraving on carnelian, onyx, sardonyx, amethyst, agate, chalcedony, and lapis lazuli.

As regards Assyrian metallurgy, few articles of iron have been found in the river-valley’s damp and nitrous soil, but the metal is denoted, as in Egypt, by a blue tint, and the god Ninib is termed the ‘lord of the iron coat.’ Gold and silver were profusely used as ornaments. Lead was dug in the Montes Gordæi (Kurd Mountains) near Mosul, the original Ararat of ‘Noah’s ark.’ Copper vessels, bright as gold when polished, were found in the palaces of Nimrúd: the ore was brought from the northern highlands heading the Tigris Valley, where the Arghana ma’adan (Diyar-i-Bekr mine) long supplied the Ottoman Empire. The place that exported their tin is disputed.[666] They worked well in bronze: of this alloy many castings have been found: utensils, as pots and cauldrons, cups, forks and spoons, dishes, and plates, plain and ornamented; tools, as picks, nails, and saws; thin plates; the so-called razors;[667] lamps; weapons; an ægis-like object also found in Egypt; lance-heads, shields, and door-sockets each weighing six pounds and three and three-quarter ounces.[668] The bronze gates of Balawat, with plates eight feet long showing the triumphs of Shalmaneser II. (B.C. 884–850), attest high art. Layard supplied the British Museum with many iron articles from the north-western palace at Nimrúd, and some had iron cores round which bronze had been cast for economy. Amongst them were iron chain-armour, two rusty helmets ornamented with bronze; picks, hammers, knives, and saws.[669] The approximate date may be assumed at B.C. 880.

In mimic war (hunting) the Assyrians were proficients. Many hundreds of bas-reliefs, which are more natural because less conventional than those of Egypt, illustrate the chase of the lion, stag, and jungle-swine; the wild horse, ass, and bull. They were equally skilled in the art of war, which is shown in all its phases, the march, the passage of streams, the siege, the battle, the sea-fight, or rather the river-fight, the pursuit, and the punishment of prisoners by torturing, impaling, flaying alive, crucifixion, and ‘tree-planting’ or vivi-interment. The abominable cruelties of these Asiatics, still practised by the Persian, the Kurd, and the ‘unspeakable’ Turk, contrast strongly with the mildness of the African Egyptians. Their walls, single or double, were provided with the fosse and the rampart, and with machicolations, crenelles, and battlements; the last two originally shields like the Egyptian cartouche. The _places fortes_ were attacked by the wheeled tower,[670] the iron-pointed battering ram, the scaling ladder, and the pavoise, or large shield common throughout Europe in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.[671] In the field pennons are attached to the lances, and the standard-bearers carry eagles. The action begins with missiles, slings, darts, and arrows; the mace and spear then play their part, and the Sword is never absent. The warriors—who appear on foot or horseback, with gorgeous caparisons, in chariots or swimming with floats of inflated skins—wear helmets of many shapes, crested, crescented, capped with the _fleur-de-lys_ and perfectly plain; some are close-fitting with ear-flaps, the common skull-cap (_namms_) of Ancient Egypt, and the Indian Kan-top. The head-gear usually ended in a metal point—the _pickelhaube_. The sculptors show imbricated armour or hauberks (mail-coats) of the Norman type, with stockings of iron- (?) rings, gaiters, and boots laced up in front. The shields, either circular or rounded at the top and straight at the bottom, cover the whole body.

[Heading: _THE ASSYRIAN SWORD._]

The Assyrian Sword, like the Egyptian, is of four principal shapes. One, a long poniard of Nilotic form, is carried by all classes from king to slinger. The other (_Malmulla_, ? fig. 206, 3), by some translated ‘falchion,’ appears slightly curved, not like the Turkish scymitar, but with the half-bend of the Japanese and the Indian Talwár. The curved blades in the bas-reliefs mostly characterise conquered peoples. The third is the Sa-pa-ra or Khopsh, of which an illustration will be given (p. 208); and the fourth is a club-shaped blade thickening at the end, which is almost pointless.[672] In the cuneiforms a ‘double Sword’ is often mentioned: it may be of the kind called by the Greeks ‘Chelidonian’ (chap. ix. and xi.).[673] Fancy weapons appear in the bas-reliefs—for instance, the Sword from the Nineveh palace of the Sardanapalus-reign, B.C. 1000 (fig. 210).

Mostly the weapons have richly decorated hilts and scabbards. In a royal sculpture the pommel is formed by a mound or hemisphere—a constant ornament—and below it is a ball between two flat discs: the upper jaws of two lions, placed opposite each other, embrace the blade and the grip where it presses against the metal sheath-mouth. Another has a lion’s head on the handle. The two-lion scabbard is common, and sometimes the beasts are locked in a death embrace. In another specimen the royal blade is much broader than usual, and two lions couchant form the ferrule, embracing the sheath with their paws and retrogardant or bending their heads backwards (fig. 212). The ferrule of another is enriched with a guilloche. In the inscriptions of Assur-bani-pal[674] (Sardanapalus) we read of a ‘steel Sword and its sheath of gold,’ and of ‘steel Swords of their girdles.’ Another legend runs—‘He lifted his great Sword called “Lord of the Storm,”’ proving that the Sword, like the horse, the chariot, the boat, and other favourites, had names and titles.

The dagger is often decorated with the head of the hippopotamus (a Nilotic, or rather African, beast) surmounting an imbricated handle (fig. 213).[675] This poniard is worn in the girdle, and in some cases it appears under and behind the surcoat. The longer weapon is carried by a narrow bauldric slung over the right shoulder and meeting another cord-shaped band at the breast, in fact suggesting our antiquated cross-belts. The Sword is always worn on the left side.[676] A royal Sword-belt bears several ranges of bosses and globules, which may be pearls: that of the eunuch-attendant has three wide rows, the central broken here and there by round plates. A Magian wears a broad scarf with long hanging fringes cast obliquely over the left shoulder: it is edged with a triple series of small rosettes placed in squares, and it passes over the Sword, to which, perhaps, it acts bauldric. A soldier’s bauldric is coloured red, like the wood of the bows and arrows. Another eunuch wears the Sword-belt buckled over the waist-sash, and holds in his right hand a scourge: this was the emblem of official rank, as the Egyptian carried a hide-Kurbáj.[677] Another soldier has, besides the Kamar-band (waist-sash), a red belt, and what seems to be its tassels hanging from the shoulders before and behind.

[Heading: _THE SWORD IN ASSYRIA._]

The Sword and the Sword-dagger seem to have been universally used in Assyria—none but captives and working men are without them. The vulture-headed ‘Nisroch the god’ (of Nebuchadnezzar) carries two long poniards in his breast garment, whereas Ashur in statues shoots his bow. Assur-bani-pal ‘destroys the people of Arabia with his Sword.’ The king in his car, with his Cidaris (tiara) and fly-flap, has two daggers and a Sword in his girdle, from which hang cords and tassels. Another rests his right hand upon a staff, and his left upon the pommel of his weapon. A third plunges a short straight blade, like the matador’s _espada_, between the second and third vertebræ of a wild bull, where the spinal cord is most assailable: this would be done to-day in the spectacula of Spain. Swords are worn by the magi and the eunuchs;[678] and one of the latter draws his weapon to cut off a head. The body-guard bears by his side a Sword longer than usual, and holds arrows and other weapons for his lord’s use. Even the executioner does his work with the Sword.

Happily for students, an ancient Assyrian bronze Sword was bought by Colonel Hanbury from the Bedawin at Nardin.[679] He could not ascertain whence it originally came, but it was probably placed in the hands of a statue, perhaps of Maruduk (Mars, father of Nebo or Mercury[680]): it certainly resembles those with which the god is represented upon the Cylinders[681] when fighting with the Dragon. The dimensions are:

Length of blade 16 inches Length of hilt 5⅜ „ Total length 21⅜ „ Width at hilt 1⅛ „ Width at hilt base 1⅞ „

The weapon has a richly jewelled hilt inlaid with ivory. It is of the kind known in the Assyrian inscriptions as [Cuneiform] (Sa-pa-ra).[682] It bears the following (cuneiform) inscription in three places: (1) along the whole length of the flat blade, inside edge; (2) along the back; and (3) on the outside edge, where it is divided into two lines:—

E-kal Vul-nirari sar kissati abli Bu-di-il Sar Assuri Abli Bel-nirari Sar Assuri va—

(The Palace of Vul-nirari, King of Nations, son of Budil,[683] Sar (king) of Assyria, son of Bel-nirari, Sar of Assyria, and—)

[Heading: _THE SWORD IN PERSIA._]

And now, proceeding east, we may note that the Persepolis sculptures distinctly show, as we might expect, Assyrian and Babylonian derivation. The Persians are, despite their prodigious pretensions, a comparatively modern people,[684] and they were rude enough when armed only with sling, lasso, and knife. The date of Hakhámanish (Achæmenes), the _hero eponymus_ of the ruling family, can hardly be made to precede B.C. 700. This was about the time (B.C. 721–706) when Sargon II. first mentions the Greeks as the Yaha of Yatnan (Yunan = Ionia), who sent him tribute from Cyprus and beyond. The Medes, before the reign of Cyaxares had conducted the Persians from the Caspian regions into Media Magna, were mere barbarians, like the Iliyát or Iranian nomades of the present day, who number from a quarter to a half of the population. But in starting into life Persia succeeded to a rich inheritance—Babylon. To this conquest (B.C. 538) she was led by her hero king, Cyrus the Great, or rather Kurush[685] the elder, son of Cambyses (Xenophon), not father of Cambyses (Herodotus), and a contemporary of Darius the Mede.[686] Their courage and conduct, their loyalty and simplicity, their wise laws, their generosity and their love of truth,[687] now unhappily extinct, raised them in Herodotus’ day to the proud position of ‘Lords of Asia.’

Between the bas-reliefs of Khorsabad and those of Persepolis there is the same difference as between the early Egyptian sculptures and the degenerate days of what Macrobius calls the ‘tyranny’ of the Ptolemies.[688] The drawing is less pure, the forms are heavier, the anatomical details are wanting or badly indicated—they are, in fact, clumsy imitations of far higher models.

Herodotus (VII. ch. lx.-lxxxiii.), when reviewing the army of Xerxes (Khshhershe = Ahasuerus[689]) in B.C. 480, numbers forty-five nations, of which only the six (including Colchians and Caspians) wore Swords. The long straight dagger was carried by the Pactyans, by the Paphlagonians, by the Thracians, and by the Sagartians, who spoke Persian, and who were in dress half Persians and half Pactyans (Afghans?).[690] The Sagartian Nomades (chap. lxxxv.) were armed with a short blade and with lassos of plaited thongs ending in a running noose: this denotes that they were cattle-breeders.[691] Chapter liv. again mentions ‘the Persian Sword of the kind which they call ἀκινάκης (Akinakes):’ like the Roman _pugio_ and the modern _couteau-de-chasse_, it was straight, not curved, as expressly stated by Josephus.[692] The Persian troops wore only these ‘daggers suspended from their girdles along their right thighs.’ Hence Cambyses died of a wound on his right side, and Valerius Flaccus describes a Parthian as—

Insignis manicis, insignis acinace dextro. (_Arg._ vi. 701.)

Julius Pollux explains it as a περσικὸν ξιφίδιον, τῷ μηρῷ προσηρτημένον (a Persian swordlet fastened to the thigh), and Josephus compares it with the Sica or Sicca.[693] The favourite weapon was the bow, although Darius speaks of the Sword as the instrument of punishment.

The Indians, afterwards so celebrated for their Swords, were in B.C. 480 barbarians dressed in cottons and armed with only cane bows and arrows. Of the twelve peoples who supplied the one thousand two hundred and seven triremes, the Egyptians had long cutlasses, the Cilicians ‘Swords closely resembling the cutlass of the Egyptians,’ the Lycians[694] daggers and curved falchions, and the Carians daggers and ‘enses falcati,’ which apparently were not used by the Greeks (chap. xciii.).

Representations of the Persian Acinaces abound in the sculptures of Chehel Munar (the Palace of the Forty Columns) at Persepolis. Apparently there are two kinds. Porter’s[695] illustration (Plate 37) shows a handle like the modern weapon sheathed and slung to the right side: Ammianus Marcellinus (xiv. 4) and all classics insist upon this unswordsmanlike peculiarity.[696] The other (Plate 41), worn by a robed Persian, and generally carried in the front-knots of the belt, has a crutch-handle and wavy blade, like the Malay Krís (crease). In other places (Plates 53 and 54) a human figure stabs the roaring monster in the belly with a common ‘Khanjar’-dagger. The traveller considers the stout little weapon with broad blade and ferruled sheath apparently tied to the right thigh as the Persian Sword of that age, which the classics describe as very short. The lineal descendant of this weapon, now obsolete in Persia, is the Afghan Charay, a congener of the Egyptian flesh-knife Sword.

According to Quintus Curtius: ‘The Sword-belt of Darius was of gold, and from it was suspended his scymitar, the scabbard of which was composed of one entire pearl.’ The practice of inlaying blades and hilts, still popular in Persia, may explain Herodotus (ix. 80), that amongst the spoils taken at Platæa by the Greeks ‘there were acinaces with golden ornaments.’ That of Mardonius was long kept as a trophy in the temple of Athene-Parthenos in the Athenian Acropolis. On the other hand, as was elsewhere done, blades of gold were given _honoris causâ_. Hence in the ‘Iliad’ (xviii. 597) we see Hephæstus making youths with golden cutlasses upon Achilles’ shield. According to Xenophon the royal gift of Persia was a golden scymitar, a Nisæan horse with golden bridle, and other battle-gear. Herodotus (viii. 120) makes Xerxes present the Abderites with a golden scymitar and a tiara, Diana is girt with a golden falchion (Herod. viii. 77). The golden blade is not unknown to more modern days. In the ‘Chronicles of Dalboquerque’ (Hakluyt, vol. ii. p. 204) two pages stand behind the King of Cananor, one with a Sword of gold and the other with a scymitar of gold. The weapons are distinguished from the ‘Swords adorned with gold and silver’ (vol. i. 117). The King of Siam also sent to Dom Manoel of Portugal ‘a crown and Sword of gold’ (vol. iii. 154). Cuzco supplied a unique gold celt.

The influence of the great Babylonio-Assyrian centre extended Egyptian art and science to farthest Asia. From Iran we pass, with the course of civilisation, eastward to India. Here the Hindú proper did not succeed in establishing himself amongst the original Turanian possessors of Hindustan, or the upper country, before the Eighteenth Egyptian Dynasty.[697] The South was and is still essentially Turanian—witness Malabar and its ‘nepotism.’

[Heading: THE SWORD IN INDIA.]

Unfortunately, India preserves no trustworthy Hindú records of the past. Although Herodotus called it the ‘most wealthy and populous country in the world,’ yet the absence of temples and other ruins suggests barbarism when Egypt and Assyria, Greece and Rome, were flourishing. While Buddhism is made to date from the sixth century B.C., and we have subsequent notices of Buddha’s chief worshippers,[698] there was evidently very little civilisation in the days of Alexander (B.C. 327). Nearchus made the Indians ‘write letters on cloth smoothed by being well beaten’; and Strabo (xv. 1) doubts whether India knew the use of writing. They derived their art and literature from Græco-Bactria, and they only degraded the former—Art in her highest form never travels far from the Mediterranean. The beautiful human animals and _mauvais sujets_ who were the citizens of Olympus became in grotesque India blue-skinned, many-headed and multi-armed monsters—the abortions of imagination.

India’s two great epics (‘Mahabhárat’ and ‘Ramáyana’) and fifteen Puranas are mere depositories of legendary and imaginative myths, containing few of the golden grains of truth hid in tons of rubbish. All the anthropology we learn from them is that India had a primitive (Turanian?) race, called in contempt Rakshasas or demons. It was mastered by Brahminical attacks, typified in later days by Rama and other heroes, probably during the exodes of Hyksos and Hebrews from Egypt; and long subsequently arose Buddhism, to be followed by the rule of the Moslems and Europeans.[699]

The Dhanurvidya,[700] or Bow-Science, contains the fullest description we possess of the ancient Indian arms and war-implements, but the date of composition is exceedingly doubtful. The Hindú delights in vast numbers. Assuming the population of the earth at one thousand and seventy-five billions, his Aksauhini, or complete army, according to the Nitiprakáshika, an abstract Dhanurvidya by the sage Vaishampáyana, amounts to two thousand one hundred and eighty-seven millions of foot, twenty-one thousand eight hundred and seventy millions of horse, two hundred and eighteen thousand seven hundred elephants, and twenty-one thousand eight hundred and seventy chariots. The scale of salaries in gold[701] is equally liberal and absurd.

The Hindú mind—so far justifying the term ‘Indo-Germanic’—connects everything with metaphysics,[702] or a something that goes beyond physical phenomena. Hence it ascribes all arms and armour to supernatural causes. Jáyá, a daughter of primæval Daksha (one of the Rishis or sacred sages), became, according to a promise of Brahma, the creator, the mother of all weapons, including missiles. These are divided into four great classes. The Yantramukta (thrown by machines); the Panimukta (hand-thrown); the Muktasandhárita (thrown and drawn back) and the Mantramukta (thrown by spells, and numbering six species), form the Mukta or thrown class of twelve species. This is opposed to the Amukta (unthrown) of twenty species, to the Muktámukta (either thrown or not) of ninety-eight varieties,[703] and to the Báhuyuddha (weapons which the body provides for personal struggles). All are personified—for instance, Dhanu, the bow, has a small face, a broad neck, a slender waist, and a strong back. He is four cubits high and is bent in three places; he has a long tongue, and his mouth has terrible tusks; his colour is of blood, and he ever makes a gurgling noise; he is covered with garlands of entrails, and he licks continually with his tongue the two corners of his mouth.[704]

The Sword (Khadga,[705] As, or Asi) belongs to the second class. According to the sage Vaishampáyana it was a superior weapon, introduced especially and separately by Brahma, who produced ‘Asidevatá.’ This ‘Sword-god’ appeared on the summit of the Himálayas shaking earth’s foundations and illuminating the sky. Brahma entrusted the arm, then fifty thumbs long and four thumbs broad, to Shiva (Rudra), still its supreme deity, in order to free the world from the Asuras or mighty dæmons. Shiva, after his success, passed it on to Vishnu, the latter to Marici, and he to Indra. The Air-god conferred it upon the guardians of the World-quarters, and these to Manu, the son of the Sun, for use against evil-doers. Since that time it has remained in his family. The Khadga has a total of nine names: carried on the left side and handled in thirty-two different ways, the weapon became a universal favourite. Amongst the four arts to be studied besides the Káma-Shastra (_Ars Amoris_), women are enjoined by the Sage Vatsya (Part I. p. 26)[706] to practise with Sword, single-stick, quarterstaff, and bow and arrow.’

The Ili (hand-sword, p. 17) is two cubits long and five fingers broad; the front part is curved; there is no hand-guard, and four movements are peculiar to it. The Prasa, or spear, in some works becomes a broadsword. The uterine brother of the Sword is the Pattisha or two-bladed battle-axe. The Asidhenu (dagger), the ‘sister of the Sword and worn by kings,’ is a three-edged blade, one cubit long, two thumbs broad, without hand-guard, carried in the belt, and used in hand-to-hand conflict. The Maushtika (fist-Sword, stiletto[707]) is only a span long, and thus very handy for all kinds of movements.

The sage Vaishampáyana, a pandit or pedant lecturing on the Art of War, warns us that the ‘Efficiency of the weapon is subject to great changes. In different ages and places the quality of an arm is not the same, for the material and mode of construction greatly vary. Moreover, much depends upon the strength and ability of the person using such weapons, in preserving, increasing, or diminishing their efficiency.’ It may also be remarked that many of his weapons appear to be the results of a brain quickened by opium or hashísh.

The sage Shukra, or Preceptor of the Dæmons, also discourses learnedly, in his ‘Shukraniti,’ on armies and weapons, including firearms. The only practical part of chap. v. (Oppert, pp. 82–144) is his description of the lucky and unlucky marks on horses. The Arabs have a similar system, and a horse with inauspicious signs sells, however well bred, for a small sum. And there is wisdom in verse 242 (p. 124):—

A non-fighting King and a ne’er-faring Priest (Brahman) Earth swallows as Snake the hole-dwelling beast.

As regards the Sword, Shukra says (Lib. iv. sect. vii. p. 109, verse 154):—

Ishadvaktrashcaikadháro vistáre chaturangulah Kshurapránto nábhisamo drahamushtissucandraruk Khadgah prasáshchaturhastadandabudhnah ksuránanah.

The Sword is a little curved and one-bladed; it is four-fingers broad, and sharp-pointed as a razor; it extends up to the navel, has a strong hilt, and is brilliant as the beautiful moon. The Khadga (two-handed Sword) is four cubits (or six feet) long,[708] broad at the hilt, and at the end-point sharp like a razor.

From neither of these works do we learn anything about an interesting subject—the elephant-Sword. It is mentioned by the Italian traveller Ludovico di Varthema (A.D. 1503–1508), who makes it two fathoms long and attached to the trunk. Athanasius Nikitin calls it a scythe. Knox in his ‘Ceylon’ also speaks of a sharp iron with a socket of three edges ‘placed on the teeth’ (tusks?). It was probably derived from the West. Antigonus, the great elephantarch; Seleucus, and Pyrrhus armed their beasts with ‘sharp points of steel in the tusks’—veritable Swords. In Da Gama’s day each animal wore ten blades, five to the tusk.[709]

It must be borne in mind that upper India about the beginning of our æra was mostly Buddhist, and consequently she bred men of peace. Yet the caves and the cave-temples supply in bas-relief specimens of Sword-bearers, and even of free fights. The weapon is mostly the short stout blade, corresponding with the Persian Acinaces, but worn in modern fashion on the left side. Mr. James Fergusson has kindly supplied me with two illustrations. The first (fig. 235) is the battle-scene showing two Swords. A huge chopper or falchion, with a tooth on the back, is wielded in the left hand, the right supporting the shield.[710] The other, straight with one median ridge, is broad at the end instead of being pointed. The second (fig. 236), which Mr. Fergusson calls the ‘first Highlander,’ is of the same date, and it shows very distinctly the handle—which might be modern—the sheath, and the mode of wearing. It is more distinct in the photograph than in the woodcut made by the author’s artist.

The temple-caves of Elephanta or Gharapuri (cave-town) in the Bay of Bombay, described by Forbes and Heber, Dr. Wilson and Mr. Burgess, show a very different and superior article. This comparatively modern basilica—burrowed out of the rock and dedicated to Shiva or Mahadeva, the third person of the Hindu Triad, and the representative of destructive-reproduction in his Trimurti or triple form—contains a multitude of alt-reliefs from ten to fourteen feet high, and so prominent that they are almost ‘undercut,’ joined to the parent-rock only by the back. At the north-east angle stands the figure of the hero Arjuna, the presumed ancestor of the Pandya Princes. This Brave, an especial favourite in Southern India,[711] holds, in the right hand, perpendicularly and point upwards, a short, straight blade, with a bevelled point like the Roman; there is a small hand-guard; the fist fills the grip, and the large pommel confines the hand, as is still the fashion throughout India.

The military tactics of the earlier Hindús are familiarly shown by our game of chess.[712] But their pandits and students, writing in the closet, borrowed or devised a whole body of ‘strategemata,’ making it easy to find amongst them the Phalanx, the Legion, the Wedge, or the Crescent attack.

Professor Oppert informs us[713] that the Arka (_Calatropis gigantea_), the huge swallow-wort with milky and blistering juice, which grows wild all over the peninsula, if ‘used with discretion when iron is being forged, contributes greatly to the excellence of the Indian steel.’ The simple is well known to the native alchemist, to the doctor, and to the vet., but I was not aware of its being generally applied to iron-working.

I reserve for Part II. details concerning the modern Indian Sword and the blades imitated from it. Lieutenant-Colonel Pollok (Madras Staff Corps)[714] describes, unfortunately without illustration, the Burmese Dalwel (‘Dalwey,’ vol. ii. p. 18) or fighting-Sword, a ‘nasty two-handed weapon with a blade about two feet long, and as sharp as a razor’ (i. 51). He also notices the Dha, or Dhaw, a knife six inches long, equally fitted for domestic use and stabbing.

NOTE.—My lamented friend Dr. Burnell, whose loss to Anglo-Oriental philology is so deeply felt, took a notable part in reducing Hindú claims to remote antiquity. Whereas Sir William Jones, a _littérateur_ thoroughly well imposed upon, dated the Laws of Menu from A.D. 1280, Burnell boldly assigned them to the fourth century A.D., and partly to a much later period. The Theatre of Kalidása (Sakuntala, Urwasi, &c.) he has attributed to the sixth century instead of the first; in fact he leaves nothing to B.C. but parts of the Vedas and the earliest Buddhist texts.

We can accept the reform unhesitatingly. The oldest Hindú inscription (Girnár) dates from about B.C. 250; the oldest Cave-temple from still later. The alphabet is a lineal descendant from the Egypto-Phœnician. The earliest Hindú buildings were wooden: India had no architecture which could vie with those of Greece or monarchical Rome, much less with the mighty works of Egypt and Mesopotamia. The Hindú’s ‘iron-built’ cities were probably clay-walled settlements. His mythology was Egyptian tempered with Greek: for instance, the four Yugas or periods, in the fourth of which (Kali, the black Yuga) we now are. And considering how early Christianity found its way into the Peninsula, and the highly subjective and receptive nature of the people, I cannot but believe that they borrowed largely from the sacred writings of the stranger. It is easier to hold that Christ originated, or at least influenced, Krishna, than with Volney to hold Krishna the original of Christ. In 1852 Mr. Pocock wrote about ‘India in Greece’; in 1883 we want a change of venue to ‘Greece in India.’ ‘Yavana’ (Greek) entered India with Alexander, and this gives a _terminus a quo_ though not _ad quem_.