Splits of mature wood tend to retain their linearity and their weight can be closely controlled, but they break more easily than saplings. 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. 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. Rapidly growing and fairly straight, the hedges thus constituted a latent arsenal. Traditional stories praise administrators who astutely ordered the inhabitants to plant cane because the resulting hedges not only acted as windbreaks, but also furnished materials for crude arrows in times of crisis. Shafts might be fashioned from any fairly rigid yet resilient, straight-growing material such as cane, reed, and the smaller bamboos, but the various tree woods, though theoretically possible and found in other cultures and in later eras, generally required too much work to become common. The K’ao-kung Chi dissects the arrow into four key components: the head (discussed separately below), shaft, feathers, and binding. Fortunately these insights can be supplemented by brief observations preserved in the T’ien-kung K’ai-wu, the previously cited report on traditional Chinese bow and arrow making, and knowledge derived from contemporary replication efforts. However, no shafts datable prior to the Spring and Autumn period have survived therefore, recourse must again be had to the K’ao-kung Chi, which, though no doubt somewhat idealized and based on Warring States practices, probably preserves the core of a craft tradition that developed centuries earlier. Recovered artifacts, names passed down in various texts, and discussions in later theoretical manuals indicate that different types of arrows were produced for the divergent purposes of practice, hunting, and warfare as early as the Shang. 59 As evidence, the compilers noted that large northern arrows used in small southern bows failed to travel more than thirty paces and that southern arrows fitted to northern bows simply snapped. (The late T’ien-kung K’ai-wu notes that for a given distance strong archers using powerful bows will be able to penetrate armor, while weaker archers using lower pull bows rely on accuracy for their effect.) Observing that arrows created for the bows of one region invariably fail with bows from another, just a few centuries ago the Wu-pei Chih still found it necessary to emphasize that the bow and arrows must be closely matched. No doubt the dynamic nature of their interrelationship was understood early on, but theoretical contemplation remains scant, primarily preserved within more general discussions of how the bow and archer must be suited to each other. Although the bow and arrow are inextricably linked, they seem to have advanced in spurts, often jointly but sometimes marked by significant changes in just one or the other.
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