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Originally Posted by Jim McDougall
The main purpose of the mace as I understand it is to crush and compromise armour, either to render the wearer immobile or unable to defend himself, and often to break or open the armour to gain an opening for stabbing. Clearly this would apply to plate type armour, but in India, often we would be looking at mail or heavily padded cloth protection. With mail there would be a distinct threat of this becoming lodged, as well as with cloth.
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A mace could also give you a concussion right through armor without having to damage the armor and in the case of mail and cloth armor bones could be broken. One of the reaons you see such a wide variety of weapons in India is the wide variety of armor that warriors would be facing depending on their opponent. From cloth based armor such as peti (quilted armor) and chilta hazar masha (coat of a thousand nails), mail armor, mail and plate armor and plate armor. Weapons had to be chosen based on what type of armor your enemy would be wearing, weapons were designed to circumvent the particular strength of each type of armor, it was a vicious circle.