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ARCHEOLOGICAL NOTES.
AUGUST, 1878.]
air of power and majesty over the old king's features, so that he almost seemed to acknowledge the salutations of the crowds as he passed in state for the last time through the embattled gateway of those wide-circling ramparts round which so many famous commanders and the armies of so many races have met in fight. There, on the bank of the sacred river, without the walls, a huge pile of sandalwood was laid, and with great weeping the royal robes were taken off one by one, and the body, wrapped in a simple muslin garment, placed upon the pile, and heaped over with the fragrant fuel. The nearest descendant, a boy of twelve, was carried thrice round the pile, and at the last circuit a pot of water was dashed to pieces on the ground, emblematic of the life of man. The boy then lit the pile, and the loud long-sustained lament of a nation filled the air as the flames rose.
With this king the raj became extinct, but eventually all the personal and landed property, the palace, treasury, jewels, &c., were made over by Government to the chief Rânî,-everything in the palace, except the contents of the old armoury, which, as useless to the family, the Government decided to remove and disperse. The need of preparation for war and all its pomp and circumstance had long since disappeared from Tanjor, and the armoury' consisted of great heaps of old weapons of all conceivable descriptions, lying piled upon the floor of the Sangita Mahal music-hall,' a large detached building within the precincts of the palace, entered by a low massive antique portico. The floor of the interior was sunken, much resembling a huge swimming-bath, and a covered gallery ran round the wall above, whence, it was said, the ladies of the court in old days used to look down upon games, wrestling-matches and the like. But the bottom had long been occupied by many tons of rusty arms and weapons, in confused heaps, coated and caked together with thick rust. Hundreds of swords, straight, curved, and ripple-edged, many beautifully damascened and inlaid with hunting or battle scenes in gold; many broad blades with long inscriptions in Marathi or Kanarese characters, and some so finely tempered as to bend and quiver like whalebone. There were long gauntlet-hilts, brass or steel, in endless devices, hilts inlaid with gold, and hilts and guards of the most tasteful and elaborate
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steel-work. There were long-bladed swords and executioners' swords, two-handed, thickbacked, and immensely heavy. Daggers, knives, and poniards by scores, of all imaginable and almost unimaginable shapes, double- and triple-bladed; some with pistols or spring-blades concealed in their handles, and the hilts of many of the kuttars of the most beautiful and elaborate pierced steel-work, in endless devices, rivalling the best medieval European metalwork. There was a profusion of long narrow thin-bladed knives, mostly with bone or ivory handles very prettily carved, ending in parrotheads and the like, or the whole handle forming a bird or monster, with legs and wings pressed close to the body, all exquisitely carved. The use of these seemed problematical: some said they were used to cut fruit, others that they had been poisoned and stuck about the roofs and walls of the women's quarters, to serve the purpose of spikes or broken glass!
Eventually the whole array was removed to Trichinapalli and deposited in the arsenal there, and after a committee of officers had sat upon the multifarious collection, and solemnly reported the ancient arms unfit for use in modern warfare, the Government, after selecting the best for the Museum, ordered the residue to be broken up and sold as old iron. This was in 1863. Being on the spot at the time, I was able to inspect and purchase a quantity of the weapons. A curious point about them was the extraordinary number of old European blades, often graven with letters and symbols of Christian meaning, attached to hilts and handles most distinctively Hindu, adorned with figures of gods and idolatrous emblems. There was an extraordinary number of long straight cut-and-thrust blades termed Phirangis, which Mr. Sinclair, in his interesting list of Dakhani weapons (Ind. Ant. vol. II. p. 216) says means the Portuguese,' and were "either imported from Europe by the Portuguese, or else made in imitation of such imported swords." Mr. Sinclair adds that both Grant Duff and Meadows Taylor have mentioned that the importation was considerable, and that Raja Sivaji's favourite sword Bhavani was a Genoa blade. This sword is figured in the History of the Mahrattas, and is said to be still preserved as a sacred relic in the Satârâ family. It is curious to note how ancient and wide-spread the custom of giving names
