[701] The Commander-in-Chief drew four thousand Varvas (gold coins) per mensem. Prof. Oppert, with true German naïveté, says (p. 8), ‘If this scale of salaries is correct, and if the salaries were really paid, one would be inclined to think that an extensive gold currency existed in ancient India.’ That the country worked its gold mines is proved by the Wynaad and other diggings, lately reopened, but we may fairly doubt the coinage;—at least, till a coin be found.
[702] I now borrow from Professor Gustav Oppert, On the Weapons &c. of the Ancient Hindus (London: Trübner, 1880). Unfortunately the work is unillustrated. Its capital fault is not adducing proofs, or offering highly unsatisfactory proofs, of the antiquity to be attributed to its authorities, the Shukraniti (p. 43); the Naishedha (p. 69), and the various pagodas showing firearms (p. 76). The Mánavad-harmashástra, or Institutes of Menu (Halhed, p. 53), speaks of ‘darts blazing with fire,’ a well-known missile, but not to be confounded with firearms proper. And the Institutes in their actual form are comparatively modern.
[703] Prof. Oppert gives the names of all these subdivisions; and, at the same time, a lesson in Hindú absurdity (p. 11).
[704] Here we have the true Indian imaginativeness. The idea of a Western anthropomorphising a bow after this fashion!
[705] Prof. Oppert says that Book III. of the Nitípra-kashika is entirely devoted to the Khadga. In the Shukraniti, as will be seen, the word denotes a two-handed Sword six feet long. The Professor translates it ‘broadsword.’
[706] He lived between the tenth and thirteenth centuries and wrote a notable Ovidian work. A translation is now being printed (not published) by the Hindoo Káma-Shastra Society of London and Benares.
[707] The Italian word is evidently a diminutive of the Latin stilus, or rather stylus (στῦλος). Dagger (Germ. Dolch) is from the Keltic dag, point. Degen, a larger weapon, originally means a warrior; hence the Anglo-Sax. Thaegn and our Thane.
[708] Strabo (xv. 1, § 66) makes the Indian Sword three cubits (= four feet and a half) in length; and the Greeks of the Alexandrine day notice two-handed Swords and bow-drawing with the feet.
[709] Roteiro, p. 115.
[710] This is evidently inverted. The huge falchion, an exaggeration of the Kukkri, may be seen in the British Museum, one blade inscribed with Pali characters. Most of these huge weapons were used in sacrificing; and the low-caste Mhars still behead with falchions the buffalos offered to Kali.