Identifying materials on an old whistling arrow

[Peter Dekker]

Hi,

I just obtained a nice Chinese / Manchu whistle arrow. It is of the type used for a certain form of Manchu target shooting, where one shoots on a target made of concentric felt rings of different colors. A very similar arrow appears in the 1759 regulations compiled under the Qianlong emperor, also stated to be used for this purpose. This arrow is made later than the Qianlong era but is nevertheless of very fine workmanship.

I am now trying to determine what materials were used to make it, partly out of curiosity and partly so I can attempt to reproduce such arrows.

Whistling head
It is made of a material that strongly resembles the material used for a number of old thumb rings I have. These were said to be made of tiger-bone. It is hard to verify whether the thumb rings or the whistle are in fact tiger-bone, but it is surely a very dense type of bone that was large enough to cut a whistler out of. Bones of other large animals like cattle tend to be quite porous, and this one certainly isn't. Indeed, the whistler is of a one-piece construction that was skillfully hollowed out. The walls are about half a mm thick at the whistle holes.

Behind the head are two sets of two green dyed ray-skin rims. The shaft's end is wrapped in bark. Which type of bark is this? I'm thinking it is cherry bark. It has a nice reddish glow in sunlight, comparable to Chinese huanghuali wood.

Shaft
The shaft is of wood, I suspect poplar or birch because that is what most arrows of the time were made of. I don't have the skill to tell them apart myself. Does anyone have any ideas on the type of wood?

Feathers
Light and dark brown, the color and structure is different from the eagle and vulture feathers commonly encountered on Chinese arrows. Period texts mention stork feathers on these arrows as well. I suspect they are in fact stork but have colored more brown over time. Can anyone confirm whether my guess is true?

Nock wrapping
This is the most mysterious material of them all. It looks like ray-skin at first glance but differs from the stingray-skin commonly used in Asia in two major aspects:
1. The grains on regular ray-skin are spaced much closer together.
2. The grains have dark green centers as if they sucked up more gree dye than the rest, where the grains in standard ray-skin tend to stay lighter than the surrounding material when dyed.

Black stripes
I thought they were paint at first, but close examination with a magnifying glass shows they are hair thin cord, I assume it is black silk as they hardly had anything else that delicate at the time.

Nock
This is the first Chinese / Manchu arrow I've seen with a separately inset nock. It appears to be made of some type of bone, again very dense.

I hope someone can help me ID these materials, especially the bark and the nock wrapping.

Numbers
Overall length 93.5 cm
Whistle 38 mm long / 27 mm wide
Feathers 23.5 cm long, 12 mm high
Thickness shaft: A very uniform 7mm, varying only tenths of mms.













Thanks!

-Peter

[Bede]

Peter,
I have been told that water buffalo horn from the femur is very dense and suitable for carving. There are also several large deer species such as moose and elk that might have been the source. I do not know of the properties of tiger bone.

Dr Grayson has identified the Amur Cherry as the source from which some bark bindings are made. He had been growing a tree for several years but local birds pecked hundreds of holes in the bark so his plan was frustrated.

The Turks used black silk in a similar manner to form lines near the nock for decorative effect.

I have seen horn nocks on modern Mongolian arrows, but this bone nock is unusual and recalls some Indo-Persian ones. Is the slot of the nock of a size to take a large Manchu string?

[Peter Dekker]

Hi Bede,

Thanks for the informative reply!

On the material of the whistle, I am really open for everything. As you say, it is hard to determine the properties of tiger bone with any accuracy. It would be interesting to obtain a buffalo of deer femur and see what it brings. Considering the shape of the whistle and the spongy inside of bone, the round head of a femur is indeed probably the only bone that could be used to carve this shape out of.

I am not familiar with the Amur cherry but given its location it is highly likely. It appears from what I've been able to find so far that the Manchus held on to materials native to their region up until quite late in the dynasty. I take it that Amur refers to the river there? Too bad the tree was ruined by birds. Perhaps that's where the Manchu shamans came to play!

The slot of the nock is indeed large enough for a Manchu bow string 6mm thick.

I hadn't made the observation myself yet but I am not surprised about the similarity with Indo-Persian arrows. There are a lot of Indo-Persian influences on many other types of Chinese arms especially those from the 18th century: Tiger spears with katar-shaped heads with sunken panels, U-turn fullers on sabers, raised backedges on sabers, etc. If they took stylistic features from a culture in their edged weapons, it makes sense to me that some of their archery equipment took similar influence, albeit in a more limited degree.

It is also interesting that the Turks used similar silk thread for decorative purposes, another thing I was previously unaware of.

Great stuff, Bede!

-Peter

[Jos?Dom]

Do you have an idea how the point is inserted in the shafts?
I wonder what's the purpose of this type of arrow. Probably it's a signal arrows; I don't think Chinese used this arrows for ceremonial purposes as the Japanese with their exorcism hikime-ya.

Ok, now shoot the arrow to the sky and let's us know how it sounds!

[Bede]

Peter,
The Amur Cherry is named after the river.

I assume the head is mounted in the usual way with a tenon carved into the end of the arrow shaft fitting into a small hole on the inside of the front of the whistling head. The ones I have seen also fit tightly at the lower end of the head. Usually the arrows taper towards the head anyway which makes for an airtight fit.

[Peter Dekker]

Do you have an idea how the point is inserted in the shafts?

Quite like how Bede says it is, but the tenon fitting into the mortise appears to be some separate piece of bamboo that is inserted into the shaft. I've seen this construction once before, one on a gigantic whistling arrow in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum in New York. (With gigantic I mean a shaft of 125 cm long, 20mm thick and a whistle head of about 15cm long and 13cm wide.)

I wonder what's the purpose of this type of arrow. Probably it's a signal arrows; I don't think Chinese used this arrows for ceremonial purposes as the Japanese with their exorcism hikime-ya.

Numerous. Although often believed to be used by commanders to guide battle, little reference points to this use in the Qing. This particular arrow is a whistle target arrow, made to shoot concentric rims out of a target in a typical Manchu archery game.

Other whistles served purposes for signaling, but apparently not on the battlefield but during hunts. Yet others were used to shoot animals like hare, who reportedly startle from the sound making them easier to hit. One of the more peculiar whistles is what appears in regulations as a "Tiger shooting whistle arrow" which was used to arouse snoozing tigers! Apparently it wasn't honorable to kill a sleeping tiger so the animal needed to be gotten on its feet before attacked with arrow, musket or the special tiger spears they had.

Although there is no reference to the Manchus having ceremonial use for such arrows, it could very well be that they had. Being a people with shamanic origins, they still kept some of their rituals after their conquest of China but as these rituals were considered barbaric by those they had conquered, they kept them for themselves. Many Manchu families still had spirit poles and such, so who knows there may have very well been rituals involving whistling arrows as well that were not well documented because they wanted to keep them hidden.

Ok, now shoot the arrow to the sky and let's us know how it sounds!

It is tempting, but I think I'll just leave this one on its stand! I have blown it as hard as I could, and the sound is quite loud. More than my ears can stand, at least. And I assume that I can't quite blow as hard as the wind passes when it is shot.

-Peter

[Peter Dekker]

Oh and Bede, I looked up some pictures of Amur Cherry bark and it looks like this is the one indeed. It definitely has the same color and sheen to it. Thanks, another material identified.

Looks like I got to try to grow myself one of these as well.

-Peter

[Jos?Dom]

Talking about this subject, I ordered a whistling head a while ago. It should be here in a few weeks. David Gray from Krackow offer them for sale, I'll let you know how it looks and sounds.

[Bede]

Peter,
I have had a suggestion that the arrowhead might not be animal in origin. Apparently in Mongolian arrows, plane tree wood was used with exactly the visual effect we see in the photographs.

I am looking into some of the other information I was sent. It certainly is a beautiful arrow.

[Peter Dekker]

Hi Bede,

Thanks for diving into the matter regarding this arrow. I'm curious what more you can come up with.


Examining the whistle up close, I am quite convinced it is made of some type of bone. I've looked up examples of the "Plane wood" you mention, and although it appears to have a very dense grain indeed, it is not as dense as this stuff and has a slightly different pattern with spots in it. The whistle also lets through light quite well as bone does, and under strong magnification one can see the pores where the blood vessels went through. The cracks in it are also like you would expect them to look in bone. It also needs mention that my pics are rather magnified, so the grain de tails are much finer than they look like in the pics. The whistle is only 27mm wide at its widest point.

Despite the odd sound of it today, I think tigerbone is a rather plausible material. Tigers were far more common and frequently hunted by Qing archers in those days. Many "user-grade" thumb rings were also known to be made of tiger bone, and looking through my collection I do have a few good quality ones made of very similarly dense bone, while others show the more porous bone found in most of the bones coming from cattle.

The large number of tigers present at the day becomes clear from the fact that the military even brought their own tiger traps (in the form of crossbows) to set up around their encampments and took special tiger spears when on campaign. Villages often had tiger tridents in their arsenals to deal with lurking tigers as well.

I've found a source for the Amur cherry, or prunus maackii! Hopefully the Dutch birds aren't equally eager in destroying the bark.

-Peter

[Stephen Selby]

My guess is that the whistle is ivory becasue it seems to have clear annual growth rings. Such rings are seen clearly on tusks but are notmally hard to see on bone. I am also interested to see the 'feeler' on the shaft to show the correct draw-length. That is common today in Mongolia, but I had never seen it on an old arrow.

[Peter Dekker]

Hi Stephen,

Comparing the whistler to ivory, it appears that the grain in ivory is slightly different. It tends to "cross". I add a pic of some ivory "Mahjong" tiles below:



A friend of mine has two Chinese whistling arrows that appear to be of the same type as this one, also with this "feeler". But apart from that, I also haven't seen it on any other Chinese arrows.

I guess that accuracy, and thus very consistent draw lengths, were more important for these "sporting whistles" than for normal whistling arrows. I can't remember seeing this feature on other Chinese arrows either.

I now wonder who was first, the Chinese or the Mongolians, with this. I have never really seen an antique Mongolian arrow.

-Peter

[Bede]

I showed these pictures to Dr Grayson and he thought the arrow was Mongolian too. Walrus ivory was used in Mongolia for points for arrows to shoot at the sur targets. There is a pair in the Grayson Collection from the 1920s.

Both elephant ivory and walrus ivory are very heavy in proportion to wood. They are also much harder. Walrus ivory carvings often include parts of the dentine which has a distinct pattern.

[Peter Dekker]

Hi,

Thanks for the ongoing search for the materials and origins of this arrow!

I've looked up walrus ivory and tend to dismiss it due to differences in grain. The outer layer of this stuff has little to no grain, while the inside has a spotted appearance. Both differ significantly from the material of this whistle.

The arrow indeed shares some important characteristics with one of Dr. Grayson's Mongolian arrows, most notably the "feeler" and the separate nock:



However, the rest of the construction is much closer to what I am used to of the various Chinese / Manchu whistlers I've studied. We do know that cultures influenced eachother a lot in this era, as is most exemplified by 18th cent. Chinese sabers with design features from a wealth of cultures. The Manchus used a certain type of Mongolian arrow (Manchu: monggo yoro) to hunt rabbits on rocky terrain as well.

Vice versa, it seems that the Mongolian bow of the 20th cent. is a modified version of the Manchu. Lacking of early reference of these suggests that the Mongols have used the Manchu type until they fairly recently start to make them with shorter ears. (Easier to make / maintain? Yang Fuxi "shortened" his ears as well.)

I now wonder where this type of arrow originates. My earliest Chinese reference to a dimensionally identical "Manchu target arrow whistle" dates from 1759. Is there any earlier Mongolian reference? If not, it would be tempting to think the Mongolians also adopted these arrows from their Manchu neighbors. Where the Manchu language does attribute the rabbit arrow to the Mongols, there are no such references that attribute their distinctive whistling arrows to any culture but their own.

-Peter

[jack farrell]

Peter, Greetings. These are really nice whistling arrows and fine workmanship.

I can say for sure that the origional whistle is not made of walrus ivory. I own some Eskimo carvings and the grain is certainly not similar.

On your question of the origin of this type of archery, I hope you do not mind, but I always wondered where the Mongols starrted their contest of shooting very heavy arrows at ground objects. Then I saw a special about how Mongols hunt Marmots, a rodent larger than a big house cat also called a woodchuck here in the USA. These are cooked with the skin intact and have hot stones put inside and are put on a fire to steam the insides. For this reason the skin is wanted undamaged.

Well it occurred to me that Mongolian archery with its heavy arrows with large blunts would be perfectly suited to hunting marmots. I have no proof, just an idea.

What would others think.