Bows in ancient India
George Hart
glhart at BERKELEY.EDU
Thu Jul 10 18:22:26 UTC 2008
In translating Akananuru 175 (this is one of the Tamil anthologies), I
have the following excerpt:
My lover crossed the hot wilderness where cruel men
never miss as they draw their strong, swift bows
with their heavy strings, and, every time they shoot,
their sharp-tipped, whistling arrows fly, taking the lives
of strangers walking on the paths there and vultures
summoning their flocks feast on their flesh.
I am wondering about "heavy strings," which in Tamil is viinku
viLimpu. The first word means "enlarged," "swollen," and the second
means "edge," "border," "eyelid" (which leads the commentators to
interpret it as "edge of the upper arm"). Other occurrences, however,
make it clear that viLimpu refers to the string or a part of the
string. I am wondering whether anyone on this list has dealt with
bows in Sanskrit sources and whether the strings of bows are mentioned
as having some special feature. I think viLimpu might possibly refer
to the part of the string that comes in contact with the arrow and
that might have been thicker than the rest of the string. I recall
that when I would shoot a bow as a child, that part was often thicker,
as it could get worn down more easily than the rest of the string.
George Hart
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