1876.] R. Maclagan— On Early Asiatic Fire Weapons. Qj 



horse, and seventy thousand good musquetoons." " Their harquebuz is 

 longer than ours, but thinner and not so good for service. They can use 

 that very well, but detest the trouble of the Cannon, and such field peeces 

 as require carriage."* When Kaempfer was in Persia more than fifty years 

 after (in 1692), they seem to have got no further. " Arma illis sunt lancea, 

 sclopeta, arcus, et acinaces ; tormentorum et mortariorum nullus illis in 

 campo usus est."f India was much ahead, as we learn from Bender's ac- 

 count of Aurangzib's artillery thirty years before this time. J 



After seeing the kind of progress that was being made in India and 

 Persia in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, one may be surprised to 

 read, in the papers on the History of the Burma race, compiled by Sir A. 

 Phayre from native sources, published in the J. A. S. B., that in the begin- 

 ning of the fifteenth century, more than a hundred years before Babar ap- 

 peared with his guns on the bank of the Ganges, the king of Pegu, advancing 

 up the Irawadi against king Meng Khoung, did not dare to land and attack 

 Prome, " as it was defended with cannons and muskets. "§ The editor of 

 the Journal has observed that this mention of guns and muskets in Burma 

 in 1404 is rather remarkable. It is, if they were what we understand by 

 cannons and muskets. But it suggests a question. This was a region 

 abounding in petroleum. Is it not possible that these fire-arms may be 

 explained in the same way as Mahmud's top and tufang ? (above, page 41). 

 It is true that a traveller who was in India about that time (Nicolo Gonti) 

 says "the natives of central India" (by which he seems to mean a part he 

 had not visited) " make use of balistae and those machines which we call 



* P. 232. The objection to field guns is one that can be readily understood, from 

 the similar experience of other countries, above referred to. Of a different kind was the 

 dislike which a traveller in the previous century says the people of North Africa had to 

 the smaller fire-arms. " All the Arabians that live towards the west, where the king- 

 doms of Fez and Morocco lie, do commonly carry spears about twenty-five hands long. 

 They use no Musquets or Pistols, neither do they love 'em." (Description of Africa. 

 From John Leo and Marmot. Harris's Collection, I, ZW.J Tod says the same of the Raj- 

 puts of the same and later times. Writing of A. D. 1535 he says, " The use of artil- 

 lery was now becoming general, and the Moslems soon perceived the necessity of foot 

 for their protection ; but prejudice operated longer upon the Rajpoot, who still curses 

 *' those vile guns" which render of comparatively little value the lance of many a gal- 

 lant soldier." (Rajasthan I, Z10.J See a parallel to this idea cited by Colonel Yule, 

 Marco Polo, II, 127. 



f Amcenitates Exoticce, 75. 



% Cinquante ou soixante petites pieces de campagne, toutes de bronze ; soixante et 

 dix pieces de canon, la plupart de fonte, sans compter deux a trois cens chameaux legers 

 qui portaient chacun une petite piece de campagne de la grosseur d'un bon double mous- 

 quet. Bernier, Voyages I, 296. 



§ J. A 8. B. t Vol. XXXVIII, Part J ; 1869, p. 40. 



