| The earliest records of Chinese cultural history come down to use in the form of folk-lore. Some clues also survive in the most ancient forms of the Chinese writing system, in which the written word consisted of pictures combined into symbols. From these clues, a rather astonishing picture of ancient Chinese archery emerges. Some 3,500 years ago, there was a shamanistic archery cult in China. The shamans and rulers performed archery rituals to pray for rain, reduce floods and keep barbarians from Chinese lands. Famous among the shamans were the clan called 'Yi', whose founder, according to Chinese folklore, shot from the sky nine suns which appeared causing a drought and famine. |
| In the earliest Chinese royal dynasties, archery had an important place both in mystic ritual and in war. It was a compulsory subject, together with ritual, music, charioteering, reading and arithmetic, in the schools which trained the Chinese nobility. Some 1,000 years later, over 2,000 years before the times, archery was still an important part of imperial court ritual. Confucian scholars transformed the ancient shamanistic ritual into a shooting ritual designed to symbolize Confucian virtue. Around 2,500 years ago, the crossbow, which had appeared in China in very early times, went through a major technological development. With the invention of a precision-engineered bronze crossbow mechanism by Clansman Qin of Chu, the crossbow became capable of delivering a heavy load, and for the first time it fired a heavy bolt with such force that a graduated sight reticule and artillery method could be developed. Although that didn't end the military role of the bow and arrow, it did put archery into the hands of the ordinary infantryman, rather than the noble archer trained of years in natural, bare-bow shooting. This had a significant influence, de-mystifying and popularizing the practice of archery in China.
The inventive talent and technological skill of the Chinese people might have put an end to the bow and arrow in the battlefield had it not been for the rise of the Huns in Central Asia. The Chinese army, skilled in fighting in the plains with infantry and war chariots, was confronted with skilled archers on horseback. Just as the crossbow started to become a significant weapon of war, the enemy moved the goal-posts. King Wuling of Zhao realized that the Chinese army had no choice but to abandon their traditional infantry formations now armed with crossbows, take off their flowing Chinese robes, don the short tunics worn by the Hun horsemen, and learn to shoot with a bow from horseback.
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