Why the Rigveda Is Not an Iron Age War Text: A Comparative Study of Weapons, Warfare, and Fortifications

This paper examines concepts of weapons, warfare, and fortifications in early South Asia through a comparative analysis of the Rigveda, the Atharvaveda, and selected material and iconographic evidence from the Indus Valley Civilization. Rather than relying on poetic interpretation or later historical projections, the study employs lexical distribution analysis of warfare-related nouns and functional categorisation of weapons and defensive structures. The Rigveda displays a dense and confident vocabulary of mobile warfare, dominated by projectile weapons such as the bow and arrow and supported by detailed chariot terminology, while showing a marked absence of siege weapons, iron-specific arms, or fort-breaching concepts. The Atharvaveda, by contrast, shows a significant decline in weapon density and a corresponding rise in abstracted forms of harm, including disease, curses, and ritualised violence, suggesting a shift in how conflict was conceptualised and managed within society. When these textual patterns are compared with Indus Valley seals and architectural remains, a parallel absence of battle scenes, siege imagery, and overt militaristic iconography becomes evident, alongside the presence of large but multifunctional fortifications best understood as administrative, hydraulic, or symbolic rather than siege-oriented. Taken together, the evidence suggests that early South Asian societies operated within a warfare logic distinct from classical Iron Age models, characterised by elite, mobile conflict and non-siege fortifications. The paper argues that projecting later iron-centric warfare paradigms onto Vedic texts and Indus Valley material culture obscures indigenous patterns of social organisation and technological transition, and calls for a reassessment of early South Asian warfare chronology based on functional rather than imported typological frameworks.