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For people who like to pay attention to detail and authencity in artistic depictions. Also because I'm crazy about projectile weapons like the bow&arrow
#Thread on the accuracy of artistic depiction on Shri Rama's bow. https://twitter.com/iamanjooti/status/1354824930961965074
#Thread on the accuracy of artistic depiction on Shri Rama's bow. https://twitter.com/iamanjooti/status/1354824930961965074
Let's take one of the most famous paintings "KodandaRama" and a recent one. In both of these you'd see the same kind of bow that has a characteristic bent in its limbs(the bow) and ends. This is what you call a recurve bow. It can also be called a composite bow since it's made +
of different materials for improved efficiency. Composite/recurves have a long history and almost every civilization developed versions of their own. Recurve bows get its name because the limbs curve away from the archer at their ends. Composite bows are costlier because it takes
a lot of effort and resources to make a bow of such improved efficiency. The elites including the kings in all probability were using composite/recurve bows & not the simple longbows (pic 4) as one can infer from various archaeological evidences such as coins, engravings etc.
That one thing which actually makes a composite bow much more powerful is the recurving end. A recurve bow allows one to have a shorter and more efficient bow for a given arrow velocity. It gives you mechanical leverage to deflex the stiff limbs of a composite bow as well as+
a much more efficient means of imparting energy to the limbs. The bowstring is wound at the extreme end of the recurve and stays attached to the bow for some part of the draw. The recurve end is thus the most important part of an efficient composite bow.
Now let's get back to recent & somewhat older depictions of Shri Rama wielding a bow. In all of these you'll surprisingly find that the recurving end is depicted more like an ornamentation with the string attached to the bottom of it. You'll only rarely come across a painting
in the recent times that accurately depicts this feature. The most important part of a weapon is shown as an ornamentation with intricate designs, which is not how it should be. Here's a photo montage of some famous versions of Shri Ram wielding a bow.
The orginal renditions as well as their reproductions as one can observe grossly underestimates the function of the most important part in a composite/recurve bow. But many earlier ones accurately portray the bowstring as being attached to the end of the recurve.
This mistake seems to have crept in because of the general loss of knowledge in archery or because the painters themselves are totally ignorant of the mechanics of bows. Nevertheless, the mistake is so widespread one cannot help neglecting it.
Shri Rama's bow most likely was a recurve composite bow( though I'm not sure), that may have looked like a scythian one. But the way it's being portrayed recently does little justice to the ingenuity behind its construction.
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