Mughal sword/bow

[GrahamB]

Mughal empire:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mughal_Empire

[Dmitri]

That was very cool, about the bow; thanks for posting.

[GrahamB]

That bow looks absolutely lethal. There are stories about Wu Jianquan firing a bow from horseback - I imagine it must have looked similar to that clip! Looks like you need good leg strength to do that.

[Dmitri]

Not just strength -- you need to be an incredible rider to pull that off. Of course, these folks probably learned to ride before they learned to walk, so...

But man, what an unbelievable piece of engineering!

[Chanchu]

http://www.atarn.org/frameindex.htm

Great old Asian archery site often posted on original E.F. before bizarro EF debacle.

Lots of infomation on traditional archery on Atarn, archery is a great sport- recurve bows even modern ones are a blast.

Any one shooting here? what bows? I know Daniel does, Shooter builds bows. I am not active used to shoot a short western recurve. like to get back into it more.

http://198.170.107.188/phpBB2/index.php

link to more active section of ATARN above great information and links Tibetan archery etc..

Stephen Selby originater of ATARN has a book out on Chinese Archery its quite good.

[Craig]

I just got myself a 70#@29" grozer hungarian horse bow (very similar to the mongolian horse bow), you can see a picture of it here:

http://www.ozbow.net/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=8729

still practicing every morning for 10 minutes to get the strength to draw it smoothly, also trying to develop the mongolian style thumb draw but its much harder than a 3 finger draw.

went hunting a couple of weeks back with my brother and a friend, used my brothers spare 47# predator recurve that time as I hadnt got my bow yet. My brother was using a 70# longbow and tom was using a 60# longbow. pics and story here:

http://www.ozbow.net/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=8911

[Chanchu]

That's a great looking bow! (grozer)
looks like a fun hunting trip!

[Darth Rock&Roll]

That's a beautiful bow. It seems that the technology is the apex of what was started with the composite recurve perso-parthian bow or Scythian bow. The composite bows of the Scythians looked a lot thicker than that mughal bow. the mughal bow seems much lighter and more elegant. combined with the fact that the Parthians had no stirrups and the Mughals did, the Mughal horse archers would have been a wicked force to contend with on a battlefield.

cool stuff. The sword is less impressive. I mean, it's nice, but there are far better swords than that available. (a katana would have goone straight through the entire goat. lol

[Ian]

Not just strength -- you need to be an incredible rider to pull that off. Of course, these folks probably learned to ride before they learned to walk, so...

I used to ride without hands playing mounted lacrosse, doing jumps etc. It's challenging but not incredibly hard. I'd imagine the real difficulty is in accuracy. Walking and shooting an arrow into a target is challenging enough, so bouncing on horseback must be something else!

I'd love to buy one of those bows.

[Muad'dib]

That is a great clip. The guy shooting is not bad. He's an oder of magnitude better then any of the guys I know who do Yabusame in Japan. That's the mounted archery J-style.

I have a composite bow made for me by a master mongolian bow maker, but its way on the light side. I plan on getting a grozer bow, when/if I get things settled.

About the sword though, they should have hung the carcass. Compared to the test cutting you see on coldsteel.com, it didn't look so great. Mainly because it looked like he pulled his shot.

[Pandrews1982]

I've got a wooden hunting recurve but I haven't used it yet, my teacher does a bit of xing yi archery but haven't had the chance to do any with him yet.

I'm into making training weapons out of wood and my ambition would be to build a recurve bow in chinese/mongolian style. I'm slowly researching things in between training and work and other things which get in the way, but one day. Atarn is a great site I've been there many times and I think it has some good stuff. I've just got a copy of Chinese Archery by Stephen Selby, came in the post yesterday and I am surprized how thick it is and how much info it seems to have, even original chinese characters from some of the old texts are printed, great. I intend to buy the bowyer's bible series too in due course.

On the question of acuarcy on horseback I read/heard that before they had stirups the mongolian archers would match their breathing with the steps of the horse and loose when the the horse was mid stride, can't remember where I got that from so it might be BS. The mongol horse archers also trained to fire back over their shoulder, they would charge a line of infantry, reel as if they'd lost their nerve and when the line chased they would fire back at them as they fled away usually drawing the infantry line into an ambush.

Great clips G I think I'm goign to favourite that mughal bow clip.

[Chanchu]

Stephan Selby of ATARN was on History channel "Ancient Discovery's" program this evening during a segment on Chinese whistling fire arrows. Quite interesting, the segment was very well done- shown on the west coast of the USA- played at about 1700 pacific time.

Also talked about early rockets esp. Chinese " Fire Crow" 2nd century (?) black powder propelled explosive rocket bombs.