Ethnographic Arms & Armour - View Single Post

Pusaka · 17th January 2006, 07:23 PM

In the Rig Veda Indras thunderbolt weapon is described. It has a notched surface. It is firmly held in Indras hands. It is sthavira (stable) and Dgarnssi (durable). It is a fatal weapon made of a metal called Ayas.
In relation the quote below taken from:

http://www.infinityfoundation.com/ma...k_projects.htm

• Rigveda mentions ayas about 10 times – e.g. Indra's horse had the same color as asay. (Assumed to be iron; but Tripathi disagrees because there is also Krishna-ayas, etc in texts.) Also, was iron found in neighboring countries, hence assumed to be from there.
• Refuting the above, Tripathi finds that iron in India is much earlier. Baluchistan cemeteries have iron objects. Some earlier iron in western Asia was meteorite material sculptured as rock/stone carvings, and with no metallurgical processing at all.

If Tripathi is correct and Ayas is meteorite iron then this means that not only do the daggers which Indra holds have wavy blades but they are made from meteorite iron. Which incidentally is durable because it often contains a high nickel content which retards rusting.
Such daggers would have been manufactured for ritual use and it’s probable that they were quite rare. I don’t think that they would have been used for fighting or put on display every day but where probably only used special rituals.
Could this dagger have evolved into the keris? I think we are perhaps making a mistake in thinking that ALL keris are related and therefore evolved from each other. We know that there is a difference between a keris worn everyday and a keris pusaka.
Some keris are thought to have what we may call mystical powers and these keris are certainly not worn in everyday life but only treated with the utmost respect.
I would suggest that these mystical keris would only be used for ritual and never for fighting. I would also suggest that they would probably be well made and elaborately decorated.
Does the keris pusaka descend from Indras ritual weapon? If so it would be considered as a weapon of a god and therefore well respected and only handled by appropriate persons.

17th January 2006, 07:23 PM	#124
Pusaka Member Join Date: Nov 2005 Posts: 341	In the Rig Veda Indras thunderbolt weapon is described. It has a notched surface. It is firmly held in Indras hands. It is sthavira (stable) and Dgarnssi (durable). It is a fatal weapon made of a metal called Ayas. In relation the quote below taken from: http://www.infinityfoundation.com/ma...k_projects.htm • Rigveda mentions ayas about 10 times – e.g. Indra's horse had the same color as asay. (Assumed to be iron; but Tripathi disagrees because there is also Krishna-ayas, etc in texts.) Also, was iron found in neighboring countries, hence assumed to be from there. • Refuting the above, Tripathi finds that iron in India is much earlier. Baluchistan cemeteries have iron objects. Some earlier iron in western Asia was meteorite material sculptured as rock/stone carvings, and with no metallurgical processing at all. If Tripathi is correct and Ayas is meteorite iron then this means that not only do the daggers which Indra holds have wavy blades but they are made from meteorite iron. Which incidentally is durable because it often contains a high nickel content which retards rusting. Such daggers would have been manufactured for ritual use and it’s probable that they were quite rare. I don’t think that they would have been used for fighting or put on display every day but where probably only used special rituals. Could this dagger have evolved into the keris? I think we are perhaps making a mistake in thinking that ALL keris are related and therefore evolved from each other. We know that there is a difference between a keris worn everyday and a keris pusaka. Some keris are thought to have what we may call mystical powers and these keris are certainly not worn in everyday life but only treated with the utmost respect. I would suggest that these mystical keris would only be used for ritual and never for fighting. I would also suggest that they would probably be well made and elaborately decorated. Does the keris pusaka descend from Indras ritual weapon? If so it would be considered as a weapon of a god and therefore well respected and only handled by appropriate persons.