Thread: Poisoned pearls
View Single Post
Old 27th November 2017, 10:59 AM   #11
Mercenary
Member
 
Join Date: Apr 2011
Location: Moscow, Russia
Posts: 421
Default

Sometimes I speak about it. The problem with the knowledge of Indian weapons began when the European men started "studied" traditional Indian weapons in 19th. They were not ethnographers, art historians or culturologists. Just the brilliant British men who were interested in something curious from a mysterious distant country.
They were not in Japan. So we have genuine knowledge of Japanese weapons and excellent classification. They did not study diligently and did not classify Chinese weapons. Thank them for that. So we can something understand in Chinese weapons too.
You know on what kind of sources Pant was based. It is not interesting. His books are good as encyclopedias, not more.
Jauhar, jouhar, johar - a pearl, shine of pearl, essence (soul), quality, worth.
In poetical texts "jauhar blade" was not "waved" or any "high-carbon" steel :-)
We must remember that those people had another understanding about their weapons. They did not treat arms like just a piece of iron for murdering. They had many meanings for weapons, and a murder was the last of them.

Jauhar. This is a more complex concept than just some kind of steel. But without a proper understanding of this word we could never understand what pearls are doing inside blades.

Oh.. Indian word for self immolation in Persian was written the same way.

Last edited by Mercenary; 27th November 2017 at 03:48 PM.
Mercenary is offline   Reply With Quote