Projectile?

[Anandalal N.]

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.

[Anandalal N.]

Rebeiro's comment relates to the year 1519.

[Atlantia]

well, this is a strange item.
The shape, with the flattened side of the 'ring' facing the long 'pin' end makes me wonder if this could be some form of Belaying pin.
I've heard of Iron belaying pins before, and varying sizes for smaller vessels.
Also of course, the belaying pin was often an improvised weapon, could it be that this is a pin 'designed' to double as a weapon? Or just a posh form?

What is the black stuff on the surface? A rustproofing coating?

Of course thats not really explaining the sleeve.

[Dmitry]

Some kind of masonry implement?

[katana]

I'm wondering whether this is a lance head.....why waste silver on a projectile, that in all likelyhood, you would never retrieve. I think the raised 'ring' is possibly a way of weighting the end for better balance or to help prevent penetrating too deeply. Bamboo would be an excellent shaft for a lance and a galloping horse would surely provide the necessary momentum, to do some serious damage to its target. A very sharply pointed lancehead may be a disadvantage in that it would be deeply imbedded after hitting the unfortunate victim and difficult to retrieve whilst on horseback.

A few pictures...for the fun of it. The lancers on foot is from a painting entitled CHARGING ON FOOT WITH THE LANCE: BENGAL LANCERS ATTACK GERMAN TRENCHES.—From the Painting by R. Caton Woodville.

Regards David

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