LogFAQs > #972231624

ScazarMeltex posted...

It was probably designed specifically to counter another prominent weapon at the time. Much like modern times, ancient times weapons were just part of a giant arms race.

Nope. Truth be told, the chakram is incredibly sparse in the historical record and seems to almost entirely be associated with an underlying cultural and religious motivation for it's use--The earliest evidence of the chakram comes from ancient religious texts which ascribes to them magical or mythological status. Aside from that, they are extremely rare in a historical context compared to essentially any other South Asian weapon until the 16th century when Sikh's seemed to bring them back into popularity for a time. From a practicality standpoint this actually makes a lot of sense:

The chakram would be an abysmal weapon against even inexpensive types of armor like padded jackets and simple steel helms. It has neither the mass, speed, nor acute striking surface to even penetration or bludgeon through thick linen. It does not cut like a traditional bladed weapon which is pulled across a target, so it has to bite into it's target like an axe--For which it is poorly suited due to it's very even mass distribution. A soldier equiped with a comprehensive mail armor would have nothing to fear aside from extremely fortuitous throws, and even just a shield could drop that possibility to essentially zero.

What was happening in the 16th century, however? The introduction of firearms as the primary weapon of war, which pushed the balance of power away from heavily armored infantry and cavalry formations to mass groups of lightly equipped infantry with muskets. This at least made the use of chakram somewhat viable as a harassment tool, but given that references to it in the historical record seem to imply it has more of a novelty rather than a decisive battlefield tactic, it's unsurprising why it's usage did not spread much outside of the Sikh and occasional Hindu culture.

We have to remember that humans are not perfectly rational creatures and that differences in cultural touchstones like tools is not always due to some ecological or socio-economic pressure--Sometimes humans are driven by creativity to ascribe arbitrary value to a practice or item well beyond it's practical value.