Interesting Asiatic Bows in Russian Collections

[Dusan]

Some fantastic teasures from Hermitage .

[Dusan]

another

[Dusan]

[Dusan]

Here is interesting detail. I think , angel have in midle of his bow somthing like this metal thing , about Stephen some time ago asked (?).













All archers have interesting long draw lenght.

[jbl]

Dusan Thanks for posting. I also found it interesting that the draws were long as well as all the siyahs in the pictures were also on the "big" side.

[Hermitking]

I recognize some of these images from a very fine book of color photos of Persian arts and antiquities. Particularly the extreemly bent bows pointed at the lions.

i remember first seeing those photos and they really fired my imagination back in the 90's.

[jack farrell]

Hunnic type bows, mostly with bone plates on the ears and or grips.

[JJ]

Jack, I agree that these are basically Hunnic type bows. It is the era of the Hunnic hornbow, which followed the Scythian hornbow type and was followed by the "modern" hornbow types with string bridges (Turkic, Indian, Indo-Persian, Manchu, Korean bows, to name only some of the subtypes). I see no major technical differences between hunnic type and early mongolian type bows.

Purists will refer to some of the depicted bows as Sassanidic bows, others to be byzantine bows. So can someone tell the diffferences in the Hunbow "subcategories"?

JJ

[jack farrell]

JJ; It is true that one can see the continuity between Hunn bows and early Mongol bows. However the differences are marked. for instance the Hunn bows generally have bone reenforcing plates in the ears and grips whereas in the early Mongol bows, the only remaining bone plate is on the belly of the grip. The ears are also built differently so there is a big technological difference.

To create a successful typology of Hunnic bows, one would need to begin to see similarities in construction techniques. Andrew Hall is the man there. However, correct me if I am wrong, the only two of these bows which seem to belong to the same "school" of bow making would appear to have come from the same grave, the Miran bows, (SRMS) Silk Road Museum Seoul.

Of course by Hunnic bows it is meant a bow whose construction is first associated with Hunnic graves. Turkic bows (your "modern" catagory) were first associated with Turkic tribes of Central Asia; for instance the Uygir bow posted by Serindia, which, if the attribution is correct, would now be the oldest complete bow of this designation.

[Dusan]

I agree vith you Jack. Hun bows is interesting but from the construction point of vieu are older and les connstruction way than mongol and his construction line cross mughal and turcic tribes. And i think not only construction but bow performance was better(which was close to constructin evolution ).
Another point is , that Hun tribes(Chun-nu) was probably Temudzins tribes ancestors from same area. Both construction variation are from same place.

[jack farrell]

Dusan; Agreed.

[JJ]

Jack, what are the improvements of the Mongol bow in SRM over the hunnic bows in the same vitrine? Is it less mass because of the missing bone plates? I saw that the mongol bow was considerably longer, too, but I wouldn?t see this as an improvement.

JJ

[jack farrell]

JJ; Since the one Hunn bow was stouter and shorter than the Mongol bow I would assume that it was the superior weapon. Now we know that that Miran bows had horn side plates so there was probably some slight savings in weight. The tips were also quite thinned down on that bow.

That said the Mongol bow had simpler construction. Simpler construction = more bows = more men with working bows. This is an improvement of a kind.

About the exact details, both bows are copiously published here on atarn and not so long ago so for brevity I recommend finding both original arrticles.

[Bede]

Because the bows on the plates were used in Sasanian Persia, they have generally been called Sasanian or Sasanid. Somewhere in the letters I copied the dimensions worked out for these bows.

Jack,
When you refer to "Hunnic" bows, which locations for the objects are you talking about? I am a bit confused, since Hunnic is generally used to refer to the European Huns (Attlia and the gang). I agree with your theory of the development of the Mongol bows from non-contact siyah bows. The first good study of it was in a collection of essays, Arts of the Eurasian Steppelands, Colloquies of Art and Archaeology in Asia No. 7, 1977, "Nomadic Archery: Some Observations on Composite Bow Construction", by E. McEwen, pp 188-197.

For your interest, I recently read in a book by Christopher Beckwith that there is a reasonable possibility that the Chinese characters now pronounced as Xiongnu were originally pronounced like an old North Iranian word thought to have been *skuδa. However, it is probably best to read the book itself because he then qualifies this by writing that it could have been several other words belonging with "s" including "sogd". The word originally meant archer and may be the root of Scythian as well. This does not imply that the Xiongnu (Hsiung-nu) were Iranian, only that the founding group of the confederation had Iranian loan words in its vocabulary.

[jack farrell]

Bede; I do not have any problem with Xiongnu or Hsiung-nu for the Hunnic culture of Central Asia. Indeed most modern writings from the USA describe them as such. There seems to be a political correctness about it.

But since going to Central Asia, all former soviet republics, the norm there is to refer to them as Hunns, or as Chunns, literally with that gutteral sound that Americans do not have, like they say khans. Susan Whitfield lends supporting ancient material to the word Hunns. I have no doubt that the Chinese refered to them as they did/do, but in the Russian and also Turkic sphere, these are Hunns (Chunns).

I cannot in my mind imagine the Hunns referring to themselves as Xiongnu. The Chinese made up names for all the countries with which they were familiar, they still do, which is ok by me but not original or authentic.

Although there is some literature pointing to Saka as the same peoples as Scythians; in the CA sphere, Scythian culture fades out around the second century BCE and the Saka culture replaces it till the 4th or 5th C CE. This is also the period of the Hunns.

Sogdia is a culture within the Saka. It originally was a small number of city states in Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan held together by the religion Zoroastrianism and a finesse for Silk Road trade. Sogdia survives as a state within Tajikistan and the word means "Shining". Half of Tajikistan was conquered by Persia. Most of the men were killed and the women married off to the conquerers.

These are just some thoughts. -j-