BY THE ANCIENT HINDUS. 



241 



and to destroy by every imaginable means, the murder of the 

 sleeping young Pandavas perpetrated by the Brahman 

 Asvatthama ; these and many more similar acts prove that 

 though the laws of humanity were acknowledged in abstracto 

 they were not as in the present day followed in conereto. 



Besides the interference of these moral rules with the 

 extension of the use of such weapons, another and perhaps 

 even more potent reason can be produced. Firearms 

 were such powerful engines of war, that every one, who 

 possessed them, kept their construction and handling as secret 

 as possible. This is, in fact, the real reason, why so few books 

 treat on this subject, and why such works are so jealously 

 kept secret that it is most difficult to get hold of them. 



The Mahabharata and Ramayana are full of the description 

 of wonderful divine firearms, the Agneyastra. It may be 

 that a solid substratum of fact underlies these descriptions, but 

 they are so adorned with wonders that they outrun all 

 reality. Perhaps the reason of these exaggerations was to 

 conceal the real element of truth underlying them. 



Aurva, the son of the sage IJrva, or, according to the 

 Mahabharata, a son of Cyavana, was scarcely born when 

 he threatened to burn the world by the flame proceeding from 

 him. This flame was then removed into the sea, where it 

 is known as the submarine fire (badavagni). 133 Aurva 

 became later the guardian of the orphaned Sagara, whom he 

 instructed in the Yedas and to whom he gave the fire weapon 

 (agneyastra), by means of which Sagara regained the 

 kingdom which his father Bahu had lost. Agnivesa, the son 

 of Agni, received, according to the Mahabharata, the Agneyas- 

 tra from Bharadvaja, and Agnivesa handed this weapon 

 down to the son of Bharadvaja, Drona. This wonderful fire 

 weapon plays an important part in the epic and dramatic 

 literature, but it should not be overlooked that similar 



133 See Hai'ivariisa, XIV. 



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