Thanks Jim for that introduction Clearly there is no way of confirming this. Let me add the following info. to the discussion for now. Ribeyro a professional soldier arrived in Ceylon (Sri Lanka) in 1640 and his book Fatalidade Historica is dedicated to the King of Portugal on 8th January, 1685. Writing of the early period of Portuguese in Sri Lanka he writes as follows:
"All pretence was now cast aside and they commenced to besiege us ... a host of twenty thousand men was soon assembled, two bastions were hastily erected with the help of palm trees and mounted with cannon, while more than six hundred large muskets of the size of small cannon hurled against our walls wooden darts ten palms long by day and fire lances by night." - Translated from the original Portuguese by P. E. Peiris in Ribeiro's History of Ceilao (1909)
Yes it talks of wooden darts but ten palms long. I believe Fernando explained the length of a palm in another post and this makes the dart over 6 feet in length.
The blunt heavy head of this artefact can only have an impact if hurled with great force.
The weight of the artefact is approximately 450 grams.
By the way, the elephant goad or ankus is out. The ankus has to have a recurved prong for pulling on the pressure points of the elephant. If you watch a mahout in action you will see that he rarely uses the forward faced point which in fact is only used to protect oneself should the elephant turns suddenly towards him i.e. to push the elephant away from oneself.
Regards.
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