Composite bows in India

If we can thrust the History channel at least a little bit, Babur's troops had (crab bow) when they invaded India.

Babur's troops were Central Asian Turks and used the bows you would expect from that area. The paintings from the time of his grandson, Akbar, show bows of the general form of contemporary Iranian bows. However, constructionally they may have been more closely related to what later developed into Crimean Tatar bows.

The Sind bow or chahar kham bow is closely related to bows in Afghanistan. It was distributed all across Northern India, not just in Sind. The Afghan ones were often very large. A recent sale in Sothebys, London, was of a much smaller one.

Crab bows look to me to have an old design. They may have been in India before the Mughals arrived. The design seems to be related to early Mongol bows. They do not appear clearly in art until the later Mughal period, particularly in regional art styles. Having said they look like an early design, I am talking about profiles mainly. Cross-sections have probably been influenced by later ideas.

Most bows in collections associated with Mughal rulers historically look like Persian or Crimean Tatar bows. They have more angle between the tip of the ear and the ridged portion than crab bows. They have less of an angle at the base of the ear to the working part of the limb.

Bede wrote:

Crab bows look to me to have an old design. They may have been in India before the Mughals arrived. The design seems to be related to early Mongol bows. They do not appear clearly in art until the later Mughal period, particularly in regional art styles. Having said they look like an early design, I am talking about profiles mainly. Cross-sections have probably been influenced by later ideas.

Many Non-Muslim Indians will be very very happy to learn that, in particular the Sikhs. The Sikhs are into traditional things being part of Gatka martial arts, and I believe archery both on foot and on horse were trad. part of it, using the crab bow, many of the Kamaan bows found at auctions look not so old, even the age given is often 19th century. Would be interesting to find out when the last Punjabi bowyers lived and what caused their giving up on producing bows.Was it a ruling by the British Raj that prohibed a weapon that could be used over a larger distance? Because I don't think the Sikhs would have given up one of their traditional weapons easily, or simply by the introduction of the gun.The British usually keep record of such things.Do you know more about this Bede?
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Nowadays people practice without bows

There is some indication that composite bows were made in the Punjab up to the 1920s. I don't think that regulation had anything to do with their decline. They were costly and without a strong sporting community to support their manufacture, bow makers probably had to find other work to feed their families.

I would think that bow making was modified as new ideas entered India. I have seen no information on the religion of bowyers making composite bows in India. The revival of the Kshatriya caste among the Hindu kingdoms after the collapse of the Mogul Empire would have provided patrons. However, it is important to realise that despite religious wars there was some tolerance practised by all the major religions in India. This is well documented in swords where a good sword made by a Hindu would be used by a Muslim and vice versa. Many maharajahs had Persian-made sword blades in their arsenals.

If one were to trust the monuments of India, every type of bow known could be found there from Saka (Scythian) , Greek, Qing Chinese, Turkic, Persian what have you. The Danurveda mentions bamboo bows of a "new design" which could mean laminated bamboo since bamboo self bows are ancient there.

Weapons cross ethnic/religious borders effortlessly by "contagious competitive advantage". Since tolerance was and is common to many places of strong secular governments, it becomes rather impossible to determine the first occurence of specific bow types.

However, i will mention Eggerton"s statement about the preferences of devotees of Singh who used steel bows and dressed alike. These bows are not unique to this group at all.

To my eye a Sind bow is a slight variation on a Persian design, Crab bows have much in common with Turkic. -j-

Bede wrote:

There is some indication that composite bows were made in the Punjab up to the 1920s.

Thats fascinating to hear, Bede. I woudn't go as far though as to glorify India or Pakistan as tolerant countries, people are forced by the circumstances to get along with each other, yet frequently things boil over and there was (even today) frequent communal violence, something that Gandhi tried to stop, but he coudn't - today he is far from popular, and even Wahabis now use the Kalashnikov, produced and manufactured by non believers and atheists in communist countries, that dosn't make them more tolerant...but I don't want to enter a religious or political discussion. The reason I posted those pictures is: I think it would be so great if Indians/Pakistanis could stumble upon a thread like this and get interested about Hindustani trad. archery with thumb release and crab bow.With the growing economies in Asia, people will have more leisure time in the future, browsing the internet, looking for interesting stuff, its a shame that google search spider doesn't crawl this forum.
I asume the last (crab bow) bowyers have been forced to do something else by the turbulences in the 30's and 40's that culminated in the partition, traditionally leather, bone and horn related crafts were done by Muslim artisans in North India - many of them might have been forced to relocate or worst due to turbulences.Their new abodes might have not supported a business of bowyery and forced them to do something else????This, and the western import bows might have been the death blow for Hindustani bowyery and trad. archery though I believe its not too late to revive it, in India, many presumed dead things have been revived.
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Sikh Nihangs practicing Gatka archery with modern bows and imported drawing technique

India is a country with extreme heat in spring, extreme humidity in summer and even severe cold+humidity in winter in the North, there are also tiny little insects that eat away organic matter such as wood and horn in no time, the crab bow must have either been extremly durable to withstand all this, or a lot of techniques and tools such as drying/heating boxes and other methods must have existed. From some of today's Indian craftsmen I know that they actually add a little poison to their glues in order to keep tiny insects away from it. Anyone know more on this?

Alam,
Adam Karpowicz has pointed out that some crab bows were covered in metal foil under the paintwork which would served to keep the moisture level constant and reduce the action of insects. The fact that the bows were covered in sinew also would help. The feather mites and carpet beetles that eat horn did not like sinew for some reason. I have a bow where the horn inserts in the tips were eaten away because they were exposed but the belly horn was intact.

Adam might like to comment whether he thinks the horn was there to help to stop the tips fracturing from the impact of the string or whether it was to generally strengthen the tips. It could do both of course.

Yokhua said in Korea that the bows he made for use in Taiwan had less glue them because of the humidity but the sinew cracked in the drier air of Korea. Perhaps Indian bows were also less saturated with glue.

There is a Sikh sect sometimes called Akalis who had a preference for steel weapons and I have seen them photographed with steel bows. I assume that they were heirlooms, but some might be new.

Alam,

I'm not sure where you are located. But you seem to have a good knowledge of Indian society. How could we contact people like those in the fantastic photograph of Sikh archers, and try to get them interested in reviving traditional skills? Based on the costumes they were wearing, it looks as if they might be amenable to traditional ideas if they were aware that ATARN could help them source traditional equipment and techniques.

The Gatka martial arts practioners are usually well organized in arkharas and clubs. They are however very religious groups, and I have doubts that they will actually take advice by non members of their communities but I may be wrong on this.It's better I think to attract ordinary people and have them introduce it into their communities. A good starting point would be to add Asian Traditional Archery Network translated into Gurmukhi script and for the sake of justice also in Shahmukhi script on the starting page of Atarn.org.That would be a small but very welcoming gesture for people of East and West Punjab alike. I contacted a group on Punjabiyat and called for help regarding the translation. I also gave them a link to Atarn.org, so they may contact you directly. Later you can add Hindi and Urdu scripts as well and Farsi and Arabic. People may actually feel excluded when they don't see their language on the welcoming page. There is more that can be done later. I would recommend that a member of ATARN writes a wikipedia on the crab bow or kaman (not calling it Mughal bow, as it was not only used by Mughals) or simply the Indian composite bow.I can't do this because I have no experience with the way of citations - I am not a scholar. A link back to Atarn could be added at the bottom of the wiki, that would sure draw many Indians to Atarn. Again, don't give certain groups or countries the feeling, that they are being excluded on Atarn inspite them having magnificent Asian archery traditions using true composite bows.Specially in respect of the welcoming page (which is very nice btw).Lets start with little nice gestures.....

This group may also be interested while being quiet approachable: http://www.gatka.de/