Pre-Mauryan “Rattle-Mirrors” with Artistic Designs from Scythian Burial Mounds of the Altai Region in the Light of Sanskrit Sources

Abstract

"Numerous publications appeared in Russia in the late 1990s related to a series of so-called “rattle-mirrors” unearthed in Scythian burial mounds, mostly in the Altai mountains, South Siberia.
The first mirror of this kind was found by the archaeologist Sergei Rudenko in 1947 in a burial chamber inside the Second Pazyryk mound. Its owner was a young woman buried together with a man of a high social rank (probably the ruler of a tribe or union of tribes). On the reverse of the mirror between two (inner and outer) circular rims there are 12 perfectly regular concentric circles obviously drawn with the help of compasses. Between each two circles there is a row of triangles looking like flames of fire or the rays of the sun. It can be maintained with certainty that the whole makes a “solar” design. (...)"