Obsolete Weapons in the Mahabharata

An Attempt at Reconstruction

Authors

  • Andrzej Babkiewicz University of Warsaw Author
  • Sven Sellmer Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań Author

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1558/rosa.24401

Keywords:

disc (weapon), Mahābhārata, plough (weapon), thunderbolt, trident, vajra, weapons

Abstract

The paper deals with four weapons that appear in the Mahabharata, but are never, or only exceptionally, employed in real combat: plough (hala), wheel/disc (cakra), thunderbolt (vajra) and trident (trisula). In each case, an attempt to reconstruct the prehistory of the weapon is made, the textual and material evidence is examined, and a hypothesis is presented as to how the weapon was imagined by the authors and recipients of the epic.

Author Biographies

  • Andrzej Babkiewicz, University of Warsaw

    Andrzej Babkiewicz (University of Warsaw) is interested in the literature of Indian antiquity and the Indian Middle Ages, especially its religious, philosophical and mythological aspects. His theses and papers are mainly devoted to the analysis of the Mahābhārata and the Bhāgavata Purāṇa. He also deals with the religions of the subcontinent, the philosophical texts of the Brahmanical schools, Indian astrology, architecture, and aesthetics and traditional Sanskrit grammar.

  • Sven Sellmer, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań

    Sven Sellmer is associate professor at the Institute for Oriental Studies, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań, Poland. He earned his PhD at Kiel University with a comparative philosophical study on Indian and Greek notions of shaping subjectivity. Since then, he has mainly pursued IT-based investigations of the Mahābhārata and Vedic literature, and has recently returned to a cross-cultural perspective by comparing the ‘psychological’ language of the Greek and Sanskrit epics.

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Published

2022-12-24

Issue

Vol. 16 No. 2-3 (2022)

Section

Articles

License

© Equinox Publishing Ltd.

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How to Cite

Babkiewicz, A., & Sellmer, S. (2022). Obsolete Weapons in the Mahabharata: An Attempt at Reconstruction. Religions of South Asia, 16(2-3), 201–219. https://doi.org/10.1558/rosa.24401