Mughal War Arrows

Okie doke everybody, thank you for joining me. Today I have something very very special to show you and it is with great thanks to a friend of mine who has purchased these, of which I've just collected them for him. These will be going off to Switzerland, they belong to him, they're not mine. But a great big thank you to him for letting me and giving me permission to share these with you and to do a little bit of a talk about these original Mughal arrows. Now the Mughal Empire, lasted for approximately 300 years, it might be 331 to be exact but approximately 300 years. So to put into perspective these arrows that we have on the table here are between 324 years and 223, 224 years of age I believe if my maths is correct. Now given their age they are in absolute immaculate quality. You'll see the pictures now which I'm going to overlay whilst I'm talking. The artwork that is on these arrows is absolutely phenomenal, it is so so intricate. I'm also being very very careful with these, I'm wearing gloves because they are antiques but the artwork that you can see on these here is absolutely sublime. The attention to detail in painting of all the little flowers and the little glyphs, all of the artwork is so well preserved given the age of these arrows. Now these are military arrows or they were at least listed as military arrows. I've done a little bit of research myself and I've got no reason to believe why there wouldn't be military arrows. There is a possibility and I have had a conversation with the gentleman these belong to that a few of them might be hunting arrows. His beliefs are that these here with the really big heavy arrowheads are probably maybe big game arrows, maybe things like elephants and things. I've done a little bit of research, I think they might actually be siege arrows. He did mention siege arrows as well, I will get into what siege arrows are. They're not arrows that are fired at walls or siege structures but we will get into that. But wow, what a beautiful display of arrows we have here on the table and I love seeing history, like I love history. For anybody that's followed the channel for a while now you'll know that I love my medieval history and having something on my table as distinctive as these and so personal, I can't help but look at these and think about maybe the person that would have shot the bow, like how would he have made the arrows, the artist that painted it, the types of feather that would have been used, the length and the size and everything else we can get from all of these arrows. We're going to do a little bit of a measuring and a weighing so we can we can get some details on these, just so I have on record like the diameters and parameters of these arrows. So if I want to try and make some of these Mughal inspired arrows then I can do, hopefully with a It's more likely to be the 18th century. Bows were used all the way through the Mughal empire eras, all the way up until the back end of the period. They were very heavily used alongside guns and obviously when guns became more predominant and guns that became more dominant on the battlefield, obviously the bows started to slip away. Now in the 18th century, I believe it was, we had the Indian mutiny. So when the British, and correct me if I'm wrong on this, my Indian knowledge isn't great, but my understanding is that when our British forces went in or the British empire went in, they seized and took a lot of the Indian weaponry, a lot of arrows and they were taken as booty so to speak. And this is probably maybe more likely where these arrows have come from, it's probably from the seizure of military booty from the Indian mutiny. Correct me if I'm wrong but I do believe that this is probably where these have come from. So we have some extremely heavy arrows and certainly up front there is a lot of weight in these siege arrows here and we have some absolute beautiful, very very thin and very very light little broadhead arrowheads that are on here as well. Now I did have a suspicion that maybe some of these were tanged, but I do believe that they are all socketed. I certainly know that these bladed arrowheads are socketed because this one here actually has a split down the side. Obviously if it was tanged we would see the tang running through the inside of the shaft that's here. So this gives us a beautiful little under the skin look as to how this was constructed. I'd love to know what the composite of the glue would have been, I have no idea. My brain would love to go into knowing how they made the pigment, so the ink and the painting, what's the chemical makeup of that. We still have little bits of feather, in fact this one here that I've just picked up actually still has the most feather on. I can also see the binding from where it would have been bound to the shaft on this particular one. It would be amazing to get maybe like a DNA sample from that and maybe see if we can figure out what species of bird the fletch would have come from. Obviously these are not mine and the one thing we won't be doing today with these arrows either is putting it on a spine test because these are incredibly old, they're very very fragile and there's no way on earth that I'm going to be bending these to try and find out what But in saying that, it might be to get a bit of a rough idea, we can weigh these, we can kind of work backwards with a little bit of math and we can try and figure out maybe roughly what kind of variety these might have come from. So let's start with the siege arrows, so we have quite a few here we've got 16 arrows in total, four of which are the bladed ones and the rest are siege arrows. Some of these have horn nocks, some of them have wood nocks as you can see here, they are all very different, all handcrafted, ever so slightly different and have multiple variations in each one but we'll start off with the generic weight of these and we'll just see what we've got. So I'm going to probably weigh all of the siege ones first and obviously I'll just read out and give a rough idea as to how much weight we've got in these here. So this one here is 800 grains, I'm just going to move these forwards so I know which ones have weight. So we've got 800 grains on that one and this one we have 902.3 grains on this one here we have 852.7 grains let's take a view we have 655.6 grains on this one so that's the ones a little bit lighter than the others bearing in mind obviously these would have all been made by hand as far as I am aware there's nothing on here which is machine made. This one is a heavy one at 1000 sorry 1042.9 grains so that's a much heavier arrow. All the shafts are very similar in diameter I'm just going to skip a few here because we do have a few. Let's have a look here 770 grains so they're all between kind of 700 800 but the heavy's been about a thousand. This one looks like it's a little bit chunkier so let's get a weight on this one here. This one is also a thousand grains as well on there so quite heavy arrows and like I say a lot of the weight is up front on here. Now it was said to me that these could potentially be hunted for hunting things like elephants it obviously is a big heavy point I have no doubt with enough force behind the back of this arrow that would probably certainly penetrate straight through a elephant's hide but a little bit of research has also told me that these are potentially siege arrows. Now a siege arrow is an arrow that is shot down from battlements. Walls coming down hitting troops on the floor and they're really really heavy up front so that when they come flying downhill they have one hell of an impact behind the back of the of the target straight into the back of the what's the word I'm looking for they have a lot of force when they're coming down out of a bow hitting their target is what I'm trying to say. Now what makes that handy is because they have a weight and they're traveling downhill the kinetic energy that they hit with is really quite immense and anybody trying to fire one of these arrows back uphill is probably going to fail because it doesn't have enough it's not light enough to travel all the way up obviously it's a heavier arrow and the weight is at the front it's probably not going to make it to the top of the walls whereas coming down is not a problem. So big heavy arrows like this were quite commonly used from the battlements shooting down with a lot of force a lot of energy and a lot of stopping power so I think this is maybe what these are probably used for and they're in immaculate condition and they have one two three four five six seven they've got it's like a chisel with eight sides down here that come down so perfect for punching holes in. Now when you compare that to other elephant hunting arrows I do have an elephant hunting arrow now it's not from the same era and it's also not from the same culture either but just to put it into perspective this is an original African arrow I do believe I did a video on these earlier in the channel this thing is like a spearhead on the back of an arrow and that is designed for taking out large large prey like elephants and things so if you want to see a video about these go check that out and you'll be able to find out but there is a massive difference between these and those and weight difference as well this obviously weighs a lot more so we'll do a little bit of weighing we'll find out how long these arrows are obviously I'm on a round table here so they don't look like they're the same length but they are pretty much all the same kind of length so we'll take a measurement from this one here they are from arrow tip and be very careful not to touch the arrows underneath with this from arrow tip to the end of the nock we are 27 and a half inches and to the inside of the nock we are well let's have a look we are 26.8 inches so we're just underneath that there let's just take a random measurement 27 and a half inches on this one we've got 27 and a half inches on this one that is actually amazing 27 and a half on that one this was actually a little bit longer and this one is 28 inches this one is 27 inches so they're around 27 27 and a half inches on average 27 inches looking like it might be the shortest one there these ones with the leaf blades or the leaf broadheads 28 and a half inches to the end of the nock obviously this one here is much much bigger is the point so it's going to be a longer arrow it's 30 inches obviously from the shoulder we'll measure from the shoulder because that's I'm assuming where we would draw to you can't draw past we have 26 and a half inch shaft on this first leaf blade so it's much shorter the bigger one that's here we have 27 and a half the last two 27 and a half and 26 and a half that was to the shoulder of the arrowhead so if you use the drawback that's at this point here so they were considerably shorter we shall measure the shaft on these ones here the shafts are 23 and a half inches 23 and a half 23 and a half 23 and a half 23 and a half they are all 23 and a half inches really interesting yeah that was actually shorter 23 inches 23 inches so all of these are pretty much 23 inches to 23 and a half inches obviously with the rest being made up of the arrowhead now whether you're drawn all the way past potentially whether you're just drawn here quite possibly they are a very short arrow I'm going to be super careful with this but even like back here they're just at the chin so maybe they would be kind of aiming down the arrow there if they can bring the string in front of the nose I don't think for a second they'd be pulling all the way back here but maybe they were but even the straightness of these is amazing the attention to detail that I've gone into making these arrows is absolutely incredible so let's take a few measurements and see if my calipers are going to turn on they are indeed so we'll start with a few measurements on these siege arrows onto the onto the nocks we'll take the widest measurement on the nock here we have 8.5 millimetres that tape is down to probably goes a little bit further 6.8 millimetres on the width of the shaft I'll take three measurements 6.3 millimetres and then up behind the back of the pile 6.7 millimetres on that one that's out of interest because these nocks are actually really quite wide and one thing I really like about war arrows is seeing how the nocks are made and how wide the nocks are actually cut and from that you can get an indication obviously as how thick the bowstring would have been and you can kind of work backwards to try and build up some kind of forensic analysis of maybe how the bow might have looked the width of the arrow nock is 4.7 millimetres exactly and then on the depth of this nock from the base to the tip is 6.1 millimetres exactly on there as well on that particular arrow I imagine there's probably going to be variation between these just with every nock anybody that builds arrows and puts arrows I'm sure you're fully aware that you get variations between each nock this one is 5.6 millimetres wide and is 5.7 millimetres deep the widest point on this nock is 8.9 millimetres where it meets the shaft is 6.5 millimetres then the actual shaft we have 6.6 millimetres and behind the pile 7.1 millimetres so they're fairly consistent all the way down now one thing I really really like with these arrows as mentioned is the artwork I think that the fact the artwork has stayed on for potentially 324 years ish give or take and we can still visually see it today is is phenomenal you can see that with some of these arrowheads they are horn some of them look as though they might be antler some of them are different types of wood so there's a little bit of variation in there as well but you can't help but think maybe some moogle archer maybe one evening was bored out of his brain and maybe was just sat there painting his arrows one evening and trying to keep himself occupied I guess maybe that could be a plausible situation maybe somebody did do that at some point is that what happened with these I have no idea looking at these this one's a good example I can see on here that the where the fletchings used to be and I can also see that the paint worker does not go underneath the the flexion here it stops there is a line that comes down the side of it so it does look like I'll try and get a picture it does look like somebody's painted this in between the flexion so it's possibility that that maybe could be an option looking I'm going to put this up here actually I'm going to get a picture to show you um looking at some of the other ones like have a look where was it this one here now this I'm not sure if this one has been fletched um if it has been fletched then it was oh it has been fletched I can just see one line down here um now what I was going to say with this particular arrow is that I can see that the paint work does go underneath where the fletch had been and it has been fletched I can see one line that runs down here it starts from here and it runs all the way up to the back end of the of the shoulder with the knock up here and the paint does go underneath the fletch or where the fletch would have been which tells me that the person that made this arrow potentially the original arrow maker himself I don't know if this was a multi-family business like it would have been done here in the UK you have the blacksmith that makes the arrow you have the guy that spins the shaft you have the fletcher and so to speak maybe this was one full kind of job rather than split up like it was over here in the UK but the person that's made this arrow has gone to the trouble of painting this before fletching it so that would tell me that maybe some of these arrows were given to military personnel already painted and it wasn't the artwork of the archer themselves I guess we'll never know but it's things like that that really fascinate me I'm going to pop that one up here so that we can get a I can get a photograph of that one to show you as well now one thing we can tell you can see with some of these where the fletches have been as mentioned I can tell you exactly how long some of these feathers were in comparison to some of the other arrows these siege arrows have much longer fletchings than what the other ones do so from the point of the serving where it would have been tied to the right up to the the crook of the knock we have a fletch there of five inches and with all eastern arrows you can see that the cock feather would have stuck up it doesn't stick out at 90 degrees like our mediterranean arrows do like our english arrows do they have the cock feather pointing up at 12 o'clock you have one feather coming out at seven and one feather coming out at five o'clock which is the same and it's the same across the board for all these arrows here now if we take one of these bladed arrows let's find a good one that's got a good length of knock on it this one is probably our best example the one with the the biggest blade on here we can see here that the knock sorry the fletch goes up to the knock again it only looks about three inches uh it's three and a half inches so from the point here all the way up to you might be able to see that from the all the way up to the back of the shoulder of the knock it's three and a half inches bang on so these have much much smaller feathers um maybe they would have been a little bit shallower than some of these bigger ones it would make sense if you have a heavier point up front you've probably got a bigger fletch to compensate um but yeah i mean these arrows obviously must have been used for firing further than these as mentioned these have been shot downhill potentially most likely from from castle walls these are probably more likely to be the arrows that they were shooting from the backs of horseback um which makes more sense because they feel longer they they are they they feel like the same kind of length as my actual mudyard arrows my hungarian arrows that i use um my draw length is 30 inches this arrow is in total from the very very back of that blade is 28 and a half inches so i reckon i could probably get get away with using that it's a little bit short for me but that certainly seems to be a bit more comfortable so it might it might make sense so when you look at history and you read about history and then you have the opportunity to have the actual artifacts in front of you these would have been in the quiver of some mughal archer you know potentially using these to defend his life and defend his comrade's life to defend his country um you know i don't know if these have been in anything that is organic so to speak um but just the concept of these still being with us and still being in such amazing condition is absolutely phenomenal um i'm going to take a few measurements i will post up some pictures of the width of these arrowheads um and all that jazz at the end of the video um so i'll put that in after my usual outro and for anybody that would like to learn and have the dimensions for these arrows without obviously having to listen to me then they'll be there for you in picture format but otherwise i just wanted to take this opportunity to share these beautiful beautiful beautiful arrows with everybody um the lighting isn't great in my room it's quite late on an evening now and it's obviously getting darker earlier so it's all lit up with artificial lights and so i hope the pictures do more justice than these do um but absolutely fascinating mughal arrows thank you so much for allowing me to share these with everybody you know who you are um i now have the very very delicate job of packaging these all up nice and neatly and shipping them off to their forever home and i'm incredibly grateful that they stopped off here at journey with arrows and uh i've been able to see these touch these and uh and take some measurements from them as well so thank you very thank you very much i hope you guys have really enjoyed this video and it's not often that we have something as amazing as this one through the doors um i'd like to get a set of these myself maybe one day obviously this this is a very expensive booty sitting on the table here um i want to treat them with the utmost respect and care and make sure that they get to switzerland so thank you very much everybody i hope you've enjoyed the videos if you want to see more artwork from these and all the measurements that will be found at the end of this video so stick with us you'll see the pictures feel free to take any of it and use it as as you please um i think i'm probably going to have a go at making some reed arrows myself i don't think i'll ever be able to get arrowheads that can match these but you never know we can see what we can do um but the knots and the artwork is beautiful i'm certainly going to try and replicate some of this artwork into my own arrows um i think it would be rude not to otherwise so thank you very much guys enjoy the rest of your evening i'm going to be very careful these and put them away and we'll see you on the next video. Thank you.