Onagers were a late introduction and something of a technological
back step. The late Empire post 2nd -3rd century (and
later) could no longer afford or support the more sophisticated twin arm torsion
weapons of the Hellenistic and early imperial period.
But you are right that China
(Han and a bit earlier) and the Classical Mediterranean had what amounted to
two different solutions to the same issue
Wouldn't the East Asian catapult have a very
dissemilar design than the Greek ones? Greek ones were onagers, Asian
ones were trebuchets.
Yeah, the two designs were based on different principles. There
is an article on the history of the catapult on my site that
incorporates European, Chinese and Islamic/Indian origins of the
catapult you might want to read.
Ok, clarification after a more detailed investigation of this early reference.
It is found in the writings of two Han dynasty scholars Jia Kui and Xu
Shen investigating the war records of the early Spring and Autumn
Period, identifying in a description of a battle the use of something
called a "hui" which was moved or activated by the King of Zhou against
the Duke of Zheng in 707 B.C. They identified this as a catapult
because the word "hui" according to the terminology used at the time
meant "catapult". However because this word no longer exists today, we
cannot be sure of their interpretation.
The now lost Fan Li Bingfa or Fan Li's Art of War credited to Fan Li of
the late Spring & Autumn Period but reliably dated only to at least
the early Eastern Han, records a machine which threw a 12 jin (2.6kg
during the Han dynasty) rock 200 paces. (Note the reduction in the
numerical statistics which were misquoted in the same account by the
two Han scholars).
Unfortunately it is again not known how or what kind of catapult it was
though the terminology used makes it clear that fairly large rocks were
fired 200 paces by some kind of construct.
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