Ancient Chinese Warfare (53 page)

Replication of traditional Western bows and arrows has shown that numerous woods can be employed, including, but not limited to, splits from pine, ash, and birch and shoots from viburnum, dogwood, hazel, and burning bush. Because arrows vibrate during flight and must flex to clear the body of the bow when released, a combination of hardness and elasticity is necessary. Splits of mature wood tend to retain their linearity and their weight can be closely controlled, but they break more easily than saplings. Conversely, saplings tend to deform, often need repeated straightening, and may vary considerably in density and thus weight despite close growth species of virtually identical dimensions having been chosen.
⁶¹

Even Western replicators emphasize that the raw materials should again be cut in late autumn and winter, because the wood will be easier to dry and less breaking will be experienced.
⁶²
Straightness always being an issue, attempts at heat straightening should commence during drying even before the bark is removed and continue after removal until the wood becomes hard and inflexible, at which point only shaving and sanding can improve the overall dynamics.

Assuming appropriately light candidates can be found, the primary issue thus becomes straightness. In China, particularly in the south, bamboo was the preferred material because, as the
T’ien-kung K’ai-wu
notes, the problems were reduced to selecting the best culms, harvesting in the proper season, and carefully drying to avoid putting a cast into the shaft.
⁶³
Several different varieties were capable of providing the immense quantities required, but one variant, now termed
Pseudosasa japonica
, was so frequently employed that it became known as “arrow” (
chien
) bamboo (
chu
). The best arrows were made from comparatively heavy culms marked by small, closely spaced joints even though they would have to be shaved smooth to reduce air friction.
⁶⁴

Although these naturally grown shafts served well for centuries, laminated bamboo arrows laboriously assembled from three long pieces glued together appeared in the Warring States period. Produced by splitting down individual culms and then matching them to achieve the requisite strength and flexibility, this method fully exploited bamboo’s desirable qualities while achieving greater solidity in the shaft than naturally hollow bamboo culms, including those less than a centimeter in diameter with closely spaced joints, might provide.

Wooden arrows all have a “down” and an “up” side that results from slight differences in density across the diameter, which may occur because one edge was closer to the heartwood, the other the sapwood, but in bamboo simply derives from differences in relative exposure to sunlight. (Prevailing winds and the additional leafing seen on sunny sides may also cause some inherent curving or lodging in the culms, making it important to choose shafts from the interior and backside of groves.) The
K’ao-kung Chi
thus speaks about determining the
yin
and
yang
sides, no doubt so as to appropriately orient the vanes and head when completing the arrow and thereby avoid undesirable flight tendencies, including the wobble that might occur even in rotating arrows. Shaving and sanding had to be disproportionately applied to the heavier side to improve the cross-sectional balance.

Arrows appropriate for a 160-centimeter Shang bow have been calculated as being 85 to 87 centimeters in length with a nominal (but possibly slightly tapered) diameter of about 1 centimeter. It is well-known that arrows up to a meter long were used in the West for bows of 145 to 165 centimeters in length, and 87-centimeter examples that employed a laminating process have been recovered from a Spring and Autumn tomb in Hebei.
⁶⁵

Although arrows, especially short crossbow models, will fly without feathers if the weight is concentrated in the front third, vanes made from feathers impart stability and are normally necessary. Considerable experience and craft are required to choose feathers with the right texture, cut them down to an essential core about 10 to 15 centimeters in length and 2 centimeters in height for the traditional-length Chinese arrow, position them exactly, and secure them permanently with some sort of adhesive augmented by thin lashings of silk. Irrespective of the type of feathers used to produce the vanes, they must all be selected from the same wing.
⁶⁶

The best feathers for achieving accurate trajectories were traditionally, though not necessarily in the Shang, thought to come from eagles, hawks, and other birds of prey capable of high soaring flight, found primarily in the north.
⁶⁷
However, because their numbers were extremely limited and their feathers found mostly in inaccessible locations, comparatively strong geese and duck feathers were commonly employed. Although they were generally shorter, arrows fletched with natural feathers were
also used for early crossbows before solid vanes of thin wood and even paper evolved. In both cases the key technical issues were determining the actual length of and appropriate positions for the feathers.

As now conceived, arrows have a center of mass and a center of drag, and the latter must fall significantly behind the former to prevent the arrow from tumbling. This is primarily achieved by having relatively heavy arrowheads and large fletchings, the vanes on well-designed and -constructed arrows also serving to impart the rotation necessary for stable flight. Generally speaking, heavier arrows have more power (momentum), even though lighter ones fly flatter and faster for the same bow. However, lighter arrows are known to be more easily affected by wind, air turbulence, and shooting errors, and air resistance increases with speed.

Under its discussion of the duties of the “officer for arrows,” the
K’ao-kung Chi
lists several types of arrows. Even allowing for considerable controversy over textual corruption and the meaning of the various terms, it is clear that early Chinese weapon makers had realized the need for the arrow’s center of gravity to fall somewhat forward of middle if effective flight characteristics were to be achieved. According to the text the center of gravity for arrows used by the military and in hunting—
ping shih
and
t’ien shih
respectively—should be 40 percent from the front. (As phrased, the front 40 percent of the shaft with the arrowhead affixed should weigh as much as the rear 60 percent, making it head heavy, as befits military arrows.)

The relative positioning of the arrowhead’s points would also be important because early Chinese arrows have only two protruding edges. Being diametrically opposite each other, they would tend to act as wind vanes in flight. Compensation would be provided by the feathers, which, if appropriately positioned, would prevent planing as well as wobble in the tail. However, even though three vanes would be employed in later arrows, the number of fletchings on Shang and earlier arrowheads, possibly only two, remains unknown.

Despite significant local variation, the arrowhead’s evolution is the most easily charted of the four components because the innumerable recovered
artifacts show relatively clear patterns of development. Apart from peregrinations in form, major changes occur in the fabricating materials, the most dramatic being the shift from readily worked natural substances including stone, shell, and bone to cast metals. Bronze first appeared in the late Hsia and early Shang dynasties, but was in turn gradually supplanted by iron in the late Warring States and thereafter.

Just as with the dagger-axe and
yüeh
, in neither case did the new material immediately displace the previous one. Opulent Shang dynasty tombs often contain both bronze and stone arrowheads, whereas stone and bone variants persist in large numbers until near the end of the Western Chou. The oft-repeated claim that changing from stone to metal invariably improved the arrow’s lethalness is completely unfounded because many stone arrowheads, especially those fabricated from certain flints and obsidian, possessed razorlike, though brittle, sharpness. Bronze arrowheads did not constitute an improvement but were instead often duller than their mineral predecessors. However, cast metals were synonymous with uniformity, resilience, and ease of production once the laborious work of mining and smelting the ore had been completed.

The arrowhead’s history, though still preliminary, has nevertheless identified such a multiplicity of basic types and distinctive substyles as to merit a vast volume rather than a highly abbreviated treatment. However, despite ever more detailed archaeological reports and the specificity of regional variation, the relative advantages of these various types are little understood and thus the reasons for their development, beyond speculating on local fads or the need to adapt to conditions of terrain, objective, and readily available materials, remain opaque. Moreover, whether out of simple conservatism, strong belief in their relative efficacy, the continued convenience of their manufacture, or topographical isolation, certain types continued to be used long after the rest of the realm had changed to more pointed, narrower, or other variations. Nevertheless, pioneering efforts by several scholars, coupled with key archaeological reports and occasional, albeit tentative, overviews, permit the key developments in the slow evolution of styles to be delineated.
⁶⁸

Arrowheads can be affixed to a shaft in two basic ways, either by inserting the base into a slot or hole at the top of the shaft or by inserting
the shaft into a cavity created in the base of the arrowhead itself. Arrowheads fabricated from natural materials that are worked with difficulty and limited in thickness, including stone and shell, and hammered metal versions were mounted by employing the former method, whereas cast metal variants were also produced with sockets. Arrowheads found in the northwestern part of China, particularly west of the Hsi Ho corridor where socket mounting was commonly employed for spears and dagger-axes, adopted this method more frequently than the east. Whether this was necessary because the region was too cool and dry for bamboo, compelling the use of indigenous woods and solid core cane, or the result of external influences is uncertain.
⁶⁹

Subsequent to simply sharpening and probably heat hardening the tip of a shaft just as the
Yi Ching
records, the first arrowheads in China were short yet somewhat elongated stone versions chipped out of flint that date back some 29,000 years.
⁷⁰
Despite their antiquity, there were few arrowheads until the Neolithic period, when their numbers suddenly began to proliferate because of rising populations in the widely dispersed proto-cultures and the more aggressive hunting activities then being undertaken despite intensive gathering practices. However, by 15,000 BCE triangular arrowheads with lengths of approximately 3 to 4 centimeters had appeared.
⁷¹
Their uniformity of size and regularity of surface show that arrow making had emerged as a craft that required specialized skills, significant materials preparation, and a somewhat inviolate sequence of steps. In combination with replica efforts, the ongoing discovery of stone fabrication workshops continues to reveal much about the methodology and complexity of arrowhead and axe production in antiquity.
⁷²

Bone arrowheads emerged in the Paleolithic and were more commonly employed than stone during the Neolithic because of the comparative ease of carving, filing, and grinding them.
⁷³
(The power of bone arrowheads should not be underestimated, because their superior shape compensates for any inherent softness in the material.)
⁷⁴
Almost always somewhat longer and more elongated than the stone variants found at individual sites, they also incorporated discernible narrow protuberances or stems at the bottom (
t’ing
) far earlier. However, considerable progress in dynamically contouring the shape of stone arrowheads similarly resulted
in noticeable improvements, including the deliberate thinning of the middle portion at the bottom of triangular versions to facilitate inserting into a notch in a wooden shaft (as illustrated) and the tapering of the more elongated or willow leaf style to form a primitive
t’ing
for the same purpose.

By the middle Neolithic (roughly 5000 to 3500 BCE) stone arrowheads were being produced by several methods, including chipping or flaking, percussive hammering, and grinding, as well as a combination of all three with additional polishing. The fundamental form remained the relatively stubby, flat, simple triangle with two sharpened edges and a sharp tip and the rounder, longer, willow-leaf-shaped variant, as shown to the right and below.
⁷⁵

Thereafter, the arrowhead’s ongoing evolution resulted in three distinct forms: a basically triangular shape; an essentially rounded one that tapered into a triangular shape at the front and narrowed slightly at the base to form a primitive
t’ing
; and what appears to be a more fully formed version of the latter, with a clearly defined
t’ing
.
⁷⁶
Thereafter, there seems to have been a gradual progression from a basically rounded but pointed arrowhead to a triangular form with sharply defined spines that flatten out to the front, two sharpened edges, and a
t’ing
for mounting. Although this new design is generally held to have been more deadly,
⁷⁷
penetration resistance would have increased as the arrowhead broadened, reducing the depth of the wound, contrary to the assumption that every evolution increases lethality of design.