The Delhi sultans were warlords. And so were most Hindu rajas. For instance, Vijayanagar, as Sastri comments, was ‘a war state . . . and its political organization was dominated by its military needs.’ Waging wars was the normal mode of life of most early medieval kings, as hunting is for predatory animals. And their hunger for land was generally insatiable. As the medieval Persian poet Saadi puts it:
If a holy man eats half his loaf,
he will give the other half to a beggar.
But if a king conquers all the world,
he will still seek another world to conquer.
Even if a king did not have any belligerent intentions, he had to be ever prepared for war, for his very survival depended on it, as medieval Indian kingdoms were all invariably bordered by potential aggressors. In that environment, it was inevitably the martial capabilities of a king that primarily defined his worth. This attitude is reflected in the Rajput custom of a newly enthroned king engaging in a battle, or at least in a mock battle, right after his accession, for him to prove his worthiness for the throne.
The incessant sweep of armies all across the subcontinent—invariably accompanied by ravaging, pillaging wild tribes—was fatally disruptive of normal life in India and was ruinous to its economy. Medieval Indian armies were all predatory by nature. Pillaging the enemy or rebel lands was part of their normal operations, and even their advance through their own kingdom was often devastating. Men in fact joined the army not so much for the salary they were given, as for the opportunity it offered for plunder during campaigns. For kings too, plundering the enemy or rebel lands was a normal and legitimate means for filling their treasuries. According to Ni’matullah, during Sikandar Lodi’s campaign against a rebel in Bayana, ‘the whole army was employed in plundering, and all the groves which spread their shade for seven kos around Bayana were torn up from their roots . . . He butchered most of the people who had fled for refuge to the hills and forests, and the rest he pillaged and put in fetters.’
Waging war on non-Muslims was considered as holy war in Islam, and it had the sanction of religion. But in most cases the claims made by sultans of waging holy wars were mere pretexts to mask their essentially predatory purpose. Their wars, even their wars against Hindu kings, usually had little or nothing to do with religion. In fact, sultans often waged pillaging wars against fellow Muslim kingdoms, just as they waged such wars against Hindu kingdoms. And rajas too often waged pillaging wars against fellow Hindu kingdoms, just as they waged such wars against Muslim kingdoms. In both cases, the invocation of religious spirit by kings at best served to rouse the combative fervour of their soldiers.
Medieval Indian wars were often unspeakably savage orgies of violence. In the case of Turco-Afghans, a relatively small troop of men in military occupation of a vast country teeming with alien people, ferocity was an essential survival requirement, to instil terror in their adversaries and thus gain a critical psychological advantage over them.
This, however, was only a contributing factor in the savagery of medieval wars. Wars, at all times and among all people everywhere in the world were savage. And Hindu kings were not far behind Turks in bestial ferocity in wars. Thus Bukka, the mid-fourteenth century king of Vijayanagar, during his campaign in the Raichur Doab, ordered all the inhabitants of a town there— men and women and even children—to be slaughtered. And when Bahmani sultan Muhammad Shah heard of this outrage, he, according to Ferishta, took a solemn oath ‘that till he had put to death one hundred thousand infidels, as an expiation for the massacre of the faithful, he would never sheathe the sword of holy war nor refrain from slaughter.’
In the ensuing battle the sultan routed the Vijayanagar army, and then set about slaughtering Hindus en-masse, ‘putting all to death without any distinction,’ reports Ferishta. ‘It is said that the slaughter amounted to 70,000 men, women and children . . . Not even pregnant women, or even children at the breast, escaped the sword . . . The slaughter was terrible . . . The inhabitants of every place around Vijayanagar . . . [were] massacred without mercy.’ Similarly, sultan Jalal-ud-din Khalji of Delhi during one of his campaigns ‘made the blood of the infidels flow in streams, and formed bridges with their heads,’ writes medieval poet Amir Khusrav.
SO IT WENT on and on. Thus when Devaraya of Vijayanagar fought against the Bahmani sultan Firuz Shah, ‘Hindus made a general massacre of Muslims, and erected a platform with their heads on the field of battle,’ recounts Ferishta. ‘And they wasted [the land] with fire and sword . . . demolished many mosques and holy places, slaughtered people without mercy . . . seeming to discharge their treasured malice and resentment of ages.’ Even Krishnadeva, one of the most cultured rulers of the age, burnt down villages and pillaged the countryside during his campaigns in Orissa and Bijapur.
European armies in India also indulged in the barbaric slaughter of innocent civilians at this time. Thus Vasco da Gama, the Portuguese explorer, during his 1504 second Indian campaign, wantonly butchered several hundred people in a vessel he captured along the Kerala coast, and soon after, on reaching Kozhikode, immediately bombarded the city, and set about slaying in cold blood some 800 harmless fishermen at the port. Similarly, Albuquerque, the early sixteenth-century Portuguese governor of Goa, on being attacked by the Bahmani army once, decapitated 150 principal Muslims in the town, and also slaughtered their wives and children, before evacuating the port. And a few months later, when he recaptured the port, he had some 6000 Muslim men, women and children there mercilessly slain. On the whole the behaviour of Christian soldiers was no different from the behaviour of Hindu and Muslim soldiers. All were equally savage. As Sewell comments, ‘Europeans seemed to think that they had a divine right to pillage, rob, and massacre the natives of India . . . Their whole record is one of a series of atrocities.’
In Kerala the chieftains there had the odd custom of turning battles into duels, which, though a savage sport, had the advantage of minimising bloodshed. ‘When they are in battle, and one army is distant from the other two ranges of a crossbow, the king says to the Brahmins, “Go to the camp of the enemy, and tell the king to let one hundred of his Naeri come, and I will go with a hundred of mine.” And thus they both go to the middle of the space, and begin to fight in this manner,’ reports Varthema. ‘And when four or six on either side are killed, the Brahmins enter into the midst of them, and make both parties return to their camp. And the said Brahmins immediately go to the armies on both sides, and say, “Nur manezar hanno?” The king answers, “Matile?” That is, the Brahmins ask, “Do you wish for any more fight?” And the king answers, “Enough, no?” And the rival king does the same. In this manner they fight, one hundred against one hundred. This is their mode of fighting.’
THIS MODE OF battle was evidently feasible only in small kingdoms with small armies. Major Indian kingdoms, of Hindus as well as of Muslims, but particularly Hindu kingdoms, deployed immense armies in battle, sometimes as many as several hundred thousand soldiers.
These armies consisted of a number of permanent divisions, as well as a large number of temporary recruits. In the case of the permanent Delhi Sultanate army, its core was made up of a central elite corps, a major division of which was stationed in the royal capital and it always accompanied the sultan on his campaigns, and served as his bodyguards. The other divisions of this elite army were stationed in various provincial forts and along the frontiers of the empire. Apart from this central army, the Sultanate army had several other contingents, recruited and maintained in the provinces by the fief (iqta) holders of the empire, and these contingents made up the bulk of the Sultanate army. The overall command of the entire army of the Sultanate was with an officer titled Ariz-i-mumalik, who functioned directly under the sultan.
The soldiers of the central elite corps were recruited with great care, their strength and skill tested in various ways, and their salaries adjusted according to their merit. ‘When anyone comes desiring to be enrolled in the army as an archer, he is given one of the bows to draw,’ reports Battuta. ‘They differ in stiffness, and his pay is graduated according to the strength he shows in drawing them. Anyone desiring to be enrolled as a trooper sets off his horse at a canter or gallop, and tries to hit a target set up there with his lance. There is also a ring there, suspended from a low wall; the candidate sets off his horse at a canter until he comes level to the ring, and if he lifts it off with his lance he is considered a good horseman. For those wishing to be enrolled as mounted archers there is a ball placed on the ground, and their pay is proportioned to their accuracy in hitting it with an arrow while going at a canter or gallop.’ There were presumably similar procedures for the recruitment of soldiers in the provincial armies of the Sultanate as well.
All soldiers were required to keep themselves fighting fit always, but the rigour of the royal control of the army varied from sultan to sultan, Balban and Ala-ud-din being particularly strict about it. On the whole, the Indian armies of the age were usually in fine fettle, as they were almost continuously engaged in wars.
THE MAIN WEAKNESS of the Indian armies was that none of them were cohesive forces, but were made up of different groups of soldiers based on their race, language and religion. In addition to these, Hindu soldiers were further divided by inviolable sect and caste taboos. These Hindu social divisions affected the armies of Muslim kings also, for they all had a large number of Hindus in them, particularly in the infantry.
The custom of recruiting Hindus into Muslim armies began right from the very first Muslim military penetration into India, the Arab conquest of Sind in the early eighth century. The practice continued under the Ghazni and Ghuri sultans, and it became quite pronounced under the Delhi sultans. The provincial armies of the Delhi Sultanate in particular had a large proportion of Hindus. The dependence of the sultans on Hindu recruits became even more pronounced when the migration of Turks into India dwindled soon after the founding of the Delhi Sultanate, because of the interposition of Mongols between India and Central Asia. Later a small number of Europeans, mainly the Portuguese, joined the Indian armies, particularly in the Bahmani and Vijayanagar kingdoms.
And just as a large number of Hindu soldiers served under sultans, so also a fair number of Muslim soldiers served under rajas. Both these practices began from the very beginning of the history of the Hindu-Muslim military engagements—while Muhammad Qasim, the commander of the very first Muslim army invading India, had a number of Hindus in his army, his adversary, Dahar, the raja of Sind, had some 500 Arabs in his army. Similarly, in the mid-twelfth century, half a century before the establishment of the Delhi Sultanate, a number of Muslim soldiers are known to have served in the army of the Hoysalas in peninsular India. Later, the rajas of Vijayanagar also recruited a good number of Muslims for their armies.
There was a general preference in India at this time, in Muslim as well as Hindu kingdoms, to recruit foreigners for the army, particularly as cavalrymen, cannoneers and musketeers. According to Ferishta, the sultan of Bijapur employed in his army a large number of foreign soldiers, such as Afghans, Abyssinians, Arabs, Persians, Turks, Uzbeks, and so on. And both Bahmani and Vijayanagar kingdoms had several European soldiers in their armies, serving as cannoneers and musketeers. A number of Portuguese marksmen are recorded to have served in the army of Krishnadeva of Vijayanagar during his campaign against Adil Shah of Bijapur, and were particularly effective in shooting down the defenders on the fort walls of Raichur.
THE OFFICERS OF the Delhi Sultanate were paid their salaries either in cash or by assigning to them the revenues of particular tracts of land. Of these two modes of payment, the land revenue assignment, iqta, was generally preferred by the Delhi sultans—as well as by most Hindu kings—as it substantially reduced the administrative burden of the state. The officers who were thus allotted lands were required to meet, from the revenue of the lands given to them, the administrative expenses of their fiefs, maintain the military contingent assigned to them, and take their own salary.
The revenue from iqta lands was however only a part of the income of army officers. A major part of their income, as well as of the income of common soldiers, came from their share of war booty. Even though they were in medieval Indian sultanates generally allowed to keep only one-fifth of the booty they collected—instead of the four-fifth they were originally allowed to keep under the Sharia prescription—this restriction was probably more than compensated by the abundance of booty they could collect during the innumerable wars waged by their kings. Cavalrymen, who played the most decisive role in medieval wars, were usually paid double the salary of infantrymen, and those who showed high valour in battle received special bonuses from the king.
Most Indian kingdoms maintained incredibly large armies, but it is hard to believe some of the figures given in medieval chronicles. Muhammad Tughluq’s army, according to Barani, was ‘as numerous as a swarm of ants or locusts.’ Arabic sources claim that the sultan’s army, central and provincial forces together, had a total strength of 900,000 soldiers! And Afif states that when Firuz Tughluq campaigned in Bengal he led an army that ‘consisted of 70,000 cavalry, innumerable infantry, 470 warlike elephants, and many barrier-breaking boats,’ and that the army that he led into Sind ‘consisted of 90,000 cavalry and 480 elephants.’
According to Barbosa, the king of Vijayanagar had ‘more than a hundred thousand men of war continually in his pay.’ And Krishnadeva in his battle against Adil Shah of Bijapur is said to have led an army ‘of about a million men, if camp-followers are included,’ according to the report of Nuniz. And Ramaraya in the battle of Talikota is said to have deployed, according to one estimate given by Ferishta, 900,000 infantry, 45,000 cavalry, and 2000 elephants, besides a large number of auxiliaries.
Most of these figures are quite probably hyperbolic. But whatever be the factuality of these figures, Indian armies were usually of mammoth size. Large size however did not necessarily mean great strength. In fact, the huge size of Indian armies often turned them into unwieldy, uncontrollable rabbles, which could be easily routed by a small, tightly organised army, as Mahmud Ghazni proved again and again during his Indian campaigns, and as Babur would later prove in his battle against Ibrahim Lodi. Similarly, in the peninsula, the Bahmani sultans usually won their battles against the much larger forces deployed by the rajas of Vijayanagar.
Adding to the unwieldiness and bedlam of Indian armies were the hordes of non-combatants that accompanied the army, such as various vendors and service providers, as well a large number of prostitutes. In the train of the Vijayanagar army there were, according to Barbosa, five or six thousand women, paid for by the raja, evidently to provide the soldiers with essential sexual services. The army on the march was also invariably followed by hordes of irregulars, adding to the chaos in the army and the devastation it caused all along the route of its march.
INDIAN ARMIES IN the early medieval period consisted of four main divisions: elephants, cavalry, archers, and infantry. The army usually also had a few non-combatant wings in it, such as engineers—to serve as sappers and miners, and to man siege engines—surgeons, physicians, and scouts.
In time two new corps—cannoneers and musketeers—were added to the Indian army, and they would play an increasingly prominent role in battles. But chariots, which had a crucial role in battles in ancient India, had virtually disappeared from the scene by the late classical period; they are not even mentioned in Harsha’s army. As for the navy, some South Indian kingdoms, the Cholas for instance, had a strong naval presence in the Indian Ocean in the classical period, but their role sharply declined by the early medieval period, and the control of the seas around India passed on to Arabs and Chinese, and eventually to Europeans. Some Indian kingdoms probably still maintained small naval fleets at this time, but there is hardly any information on this. There was however a strong presence of pirates on the western peninsular coast of India, with some of the pirate chieftains commanding as many as thirty warships.
The major reliance of Indian armies in the early medieval period was on their war elephants, and kings and generals usually rode into battle on elephants, for safety as well as to have a commanding view of the battle. War elephants have been in use in India from ancient times. King Porus of north-western India is recorded to have deployed 200 elephants in his battle against the invading army of Macedonian king Alexander in the fourth century BCE. Alexander however did not think much of the value of elephants in battle, and he devised a tactic to turn them against their own side, and thus rout the raja. Similarly, Timur in his battle against sultan Mahmud of Delhi in the late fourteenth century1 also devised a tactic to counter the threat of elephants, and win the battle.
But these were rare incidents. Elephants normally played a decisive role in Indian battles. And the size of the elephant corps in Indian armies grew greatly over the centuries, and in time their use in war spread from India to Central Asia, and even to Europe. Ghaznavids were the first Muslim kings to use elephants in large numbers in battle—Mahmud Ghazni is said to have maintained a stable of 1000 elephants, tended by Hindu mahouts. Balban valued elephants very highly, and held that ‘one elephant was worth 500 horsemen.’ The ‘elephant possesses more intelligence than any other animal in the world,’ states Varthema. ‘I have seen some elephants which have more understanding, and more discretion and intelligence, than many kind of people I have met with.’
Confronting elephants in the battlefield was a horrifying experience for most invading armies. Elephants, notes Razzak, ‘in their size resemble mountains and in their form resemble devils.’ In battle they were usually made even more terrifying by being armoured and armed. ‘Large scythes are attached to the trunks and tusks of the elephants, and the animals are clad in ornamental plates of steel. They carry a howdah, and in it are twelve men in armour with guns and arrows,’ reports Nikitin. These soldiers, according to Timur, also threw grenades and fireworks, and shot rockets at the enemy.
The very sight and smell of elephants, as well as their trumpeting, threw the horses of invaders into panic. And the terrifying charge of elephants, which could reach speeds of up to thirty kilometres an hour, usually disarrayed the enemy infantry and cavalry, and made them flee pell-mell. All this made elephants an object of absolute terror for invading armies, more so as the all too real terrors of these beasts were magnified fantastically in the legends about them. Even as late as the close of the fourteenth century, when Timur invaded India, these legends persisted, and they dispirited the Mongol soldiers.
A major problem with elephants in battle was that they often ran amuck, throwing their own army into disarray. Still, elephants continued to play a crucial role in Indian battles till the late medieval period. But their role gradually declined thereafter, for the use of firearms made them obsolete. Moreover they were easy targets for cannons. The role of elephants in the army then became limited to hauling heavy military equipments.
NEXT IN IMPORTANCE to elephants in the early medieval Indian armies were mounted archers, who usually carried spears, swords and battle-axes, apart from bows. Their arrow heads were sometimes poisoned. Several thousands of these cavalrymen simultaneously charging at full tilt and shooting arrows was an onslaught which few infantry formations could withstand. Balban, according to Barani, held that a cavalry force of six or seven thousand could easily rout a hundred thousand strong infantry force.
India did not breed good quality horses at this time, so they had to be imported in large numbers from the Middle East and Central Asia. This was done by rajas as well as sultans. ‘The king,’ says Nuniz about the raja of Vijayanagar, ‘every year buys thirteen thousand horses of Ormuz, and country-breds, of which he chooses the best for his stable, and gives the rest to his captains.’ This had to be done every year, for, as Barbosa states, ‘horses do not thrive well in their country and live therein but a short time,’ because of the hot and humid climate of India.
Indian kings also regularly recruited a good number of foreign cavalrymen— Turks and other steppe people—as they were far superior to local cavalrymen. But they too, like imported horses, had to be recruited afresh periodically, as the spirit and energy of foreign soldiers tended to decline in the enervating climate of India.
Elephant and cavalry divisions were the most powerful units of the early medieval Indian armies, to which artillery and musketry divisions were later added. But the largest numerical constituent of Indian armies has always been the infantry. This however was also its weakest wing, being an ill-disciplined horde with hardly any military training, many of them just temporary recruits from among peasants.
A curious constituent of the medieval Indian armies was its contingent of martial ‘ascetics’, about whom there are several vivid accounts in the chronicles of the Mughal period, and they were no doubt a notable presence in the Indian armies of the early medieval period as well. These ‘ascetics’ entered into battle stark naked, but with their bodies daubed all over with paint and ash. Elsewhere in Asia too, as well as in Europe, there were bands of warrior monks in medieval times, but the Indian warrior monks were entirely different from them, and were rather like bands of primitive predators. ‘Never have I seen yogis like this,’ comments Kabir, a fifteenth-century mystic poet of North India. ‘Shall I call such men ascetics or bandits?’
MOST MEDIEVAL INDIAN armies were not integrated units, but amalgams of disparate and incongruent elements. The clothes and weapons of their soldiers varied from group to group, even from person to person. There were no uniforms for soldiers, so each dressed as he liked. Often the dress of soldiers, particularly of the infantry, was minimal, as of the common people. South Indian soldiers at this time were ‘all naked and bare-footed,’ reports Nikitin, apparently ignoring the loincloth that they no doubt wore.
In contrast to this, soldiers in Afghanistan were well-dressed and wellarmoured. ‘It is the practice in the armies of Ghur for the infantry to protect themselves in battle with a covering made of a raw hide covered thickly on both sides with wool or cotton,’ writes Siraj. ‘This defensive covering is like a board, and is called karoh. When men put it on they are covered from head to foot, and their ranks look like walls. The wool is so thick that no weapon can pierce it.’ Similarly, Yadgar found that some soldiers in North India, presumably migrants from Central Asia, were ‘clothed in chain armour, which was concealed by white clothing.’
Most Indian kings and chieftains, as well as their senior officers, unlike the common soldiers, dressed in their best for battle, and wore their finest jewellery, presumably to impress and inspire their soldiers, and to awe the enemy. Thus when King Jayapala of Punjab was captured by Mahmud Ghazni in a battle, he, according to Al-Utbi, was found to be wearing several opulent jewels, such as a necklace ‘composed of large pearls and shining gems and rubies set in gold.’ Similarly, Ibrahim Lodi was heavily bejewelled when he fought against Babur in the battle of Panipat.
As in dress and ornaments, so also there were wide variations in the weapons carried by Indian soldiers, for these were not supplied by the state, but procured by each soldier, according to what he preferred or could afford. According to Chach-nama, an eighth century Arabic chronicle, the common weapons of the Indian soldiers in early medieval India were ‘swords, shields, javelins, spears, and daggers.’ Other sources indicate that they also carried lances, maces and lassos. Battuta found that in North India mounted soldiers usually carried two swords: one, called the stirrup-sword, was attached to the saddle, while the other was kept in his quiver. In South India, according to Nikitin, foot-soldiers carried ‘a shield in one hand and a sword in the other.’ And Nuniz reports that the soldiers of Vijayanagar ‘were all well armed, each after his own fashion, the archers and musketeers with their quilted tunics, and shield-men with swords and poignards in their girdles. Their shields are so large that there is no need for armour to protect the body, which is completely covered. Their horses were in full clothing. The men wore doublets, and had weapons in their hands. And on their heads were headpieces after the manner of their doublets, quilted with cotton.’ Says Razzak about Kerala soldiers: ‘In one hand they bear a . . . dagger . . . and in the other a shield made of cowhide.’
Mangonels and other naphtha and missile-throwing devices were in general use in the army of the Delhi Sultanate right from the beginning, and it was common for Indian armies to hurl incendiary arrows and javelins, as well as pots filled with combustible materials, into enemy forts and against enemy soldiers. But it was only in the mid-fourteenth century that gunpowder, invented in China in the ninth century, was introduced into India, presumably by Mongols or Turks. This was then used in various explosive devices by the army. But it took another century before Indian armies began to use firearms regularly in battle. And it was still later that cannons came to be used in India—the first recorded instance of the use of cannons in India was by Babur in the battle of Panipat in 1526. But thereafter the use of cannons became fairly widespread in field battles in India, and they played a decisive role in the battle of Talikota in 1565.
Indian kings generally preferred to recruit foreign soldiers to serve as musketeers and to man their artillery, because of their greater experience and superior skills in the use of these weapons. The artillery of the Deccan sultans in the battle of Talikota was, for instance, commanded by a Turk. There were also a number of Portuguese gunners in the armies of South Indian kingdoms.
THE PACE OF advance of an Indian army into battle was slow, because of the slow pace of its infantry, which was normally its largest division. ‘In ordinary cases eight kos (about 26 kilometres) would be one day’s march,’ states Siraj. But in an emergency the army could cover double that distance or even more. Timur in his autobiography states that he once covered twenty kos in one day, though usually he covered only six kos in a day. Laden with plunder his army marched even more slowly, covering only four or five kos a day on the average.
The armies on the march were often ruthlessly predatory. They advanced trampling down everything on their way, and devastating the country— pillaging, slaughtering people, and spreading terror—even in their own kingdom. According to Amir Khusrav, wherever the army marched, every inhabited spot was desolated. And since the army was constantly on the march, the devastation it caused was also ceaseless. The only way people could save themselves was by fleeing from the path of the army. And this they invariably did.
If this was the manner in which the army advanced into battle, its retreat from the battlefield was often even more chaotic, especially after a defeat or some other calamity. Thus when the Delhi Sultanate army retreated from Sind following the death of Muhammad Tughluq, ‘every division of the army marched without leader, rule, or route, in the greatest disorder,’ states Barani. ‘No one heeded or listened to . . . anyone.’
In sharp contrast to the chaos in the army on the march, military camps were usually well laid out and well organised in medieval India. Though there is hardly any information on the military camps of the Delhi Sultans, there is a fair amount of information on the practices in peninsular India, in Hindu as well as Muslim camps. Presumably the camp scene in North India was not much different from this. In all cases particular care was taken to protect the army camp against surprise attacks. According to Ferishta, the Bahmani sultan while on a campaign ‘surrounded his camp with carriages after the usage of Turkey, to prevent the enemy’s foot from making night-attacks.’
The most detailed account we have of a medieval military camp is about the camp of the Vijayanagar army. ‘The camp was divided into regular streets,’ reports Nuniz. ‘Each captain’s division had its own market,’ which was well-stocked with all kinds of provisions and other supplies, as in a city market; and there were there a number of craftsmen of all sorts, even jewellers. Such was the appearance of the Vijayanagar army camp that in it one ‘would think that he was in a prosperous city,’ and it was hard to believe that a war was going on.
Apart from stocking all that was required for the soldiers, the army camp also stocked immense quantities of grass and straw, needed to feed the vast number of animals in the army. ‘Anyone can imagine what amount of grass and straw would be required each day for the consumption of 32,400 horses and 551 elephants, to say nothing of the sumpter-mules and asses, and the great number of oxen which carry all the supplies and many other burdens, such as tents and other things,’ writes Nuniz.
AS IN THE case of military encampment, so also there were detailed and well-established conventions about the array of the army for battle, in the Hindu as well as the Sultanate armies. In the Delhi Sultanate, the battle array consisted of the centre, two wings, two flanking contingents, a vanguard and a rearguard. Armour-clad elephants carrying soldiers in the howdah mounted on them were usually deployed in front of this array, with a protective contingent of infantry and archers in front of them. Wide gaps were left in this frontal formation, for the cavalry, stationed at the back, to charge through the gaps and attack the enemy.
Military campaigns were normally launched, by rajas as well as by sultans, on days chosen by astrologers as lucky. This was a major factor in infusing confidence in soldiers. The king also usually went around the camp on the eve of the battle, to rouse the spirit of his soldiers. And the army stormed into battle to the sound of martial music, with the soldiers themselves yelling war cries and flinging challenges at the enemy, to psyche themselves up and to scare the enemy. Rajputs customarily entered the battle blowing conch-shells, as in a religious ritual, while Muslims struck kettledrums and blew trumpets.
At daybreak on the day of the battle ‘they strike up their music as sign that they are about to give battle,’ writes Nuniz about the practice in the Vijayanagar army, which he had probably observed personally, as he had spent about three years in the kingdom, during the reign of Achyutadeva. ‘The drums and trumpets and other music in the king’s camp then began to sound and the men to shout, so that it seemed as if the sky would fall to the earth; then [there was] the neighing and excitement of the horses, and the trumpeting of the elephants . . . [So fearsome was the din of all this] that even the very men that caused the noise were frightened by it. And the enemy on its part made no less noise, so that if you asked anything you could not hear yourself speak, and you had to ask by signs, since in no other manner could you make yourself understood.’ Timur in his autobiography records that the soldiers of the raja of Jammu ‘howled like so many jackals’ while confronting Mongols
Nearly everywhere in medieval India, the battle began with the rival armies shooting arrows at each other. Then, ‘when the time for shooting arrows was past, they used their spears and swords,’ writes Afif. ‘And when the conflict became even yet closer, the brave warriors seized each other by the waistbands, and grappled in deadly strife.’ It was a savage scene, an animal fight, except that the combatants used sword and spear and axe, instead of tooth and claw. The battlefield after a clash was usually slush with blood, and strewn with the bodies and limbs of the fallen soldiers.
Fortunately, medieval Indian battles were usually, again like animal fights, very short affairs, lasting just a few hours, seldom more than a day. Sometimes however, though rarely, a battle lasted several days. Thus Mahmud Ghazni in one of his campaigns in Punjab fought a battle ‘for three days and nights,’ according to medieval Arabic chronicler Al-Utbi. ‘On the fourth morning [Mahmud] made a most furious onslaught with swords and arrows, which lasted till noon,’ and that carried the day for him.
Desertions were fairly common in Indian armies, and were generally not taken as a serious matter by kings, though we do sometimes hear of severe action being taken against runaways. Thus, according to Nuniz, Krishnadeva during one of his campaigns commanded his loyal soldiers ‘to slay without mercy every one of those who had fled.’ But if deserters were common in Indian armies, so were warrior heroes, who preferred to fight to death rather than to flee and save their lives, thinking that it was ‘worse to be conquered than to die,’ as Nuniz puts it.
One of the most difficult tasks in medieval wars was to capture forts, because armies those days did not have the heavy weapons needed to breach fort walls, which were usually several feet thick. Even after field artillery came into use in India, these crude weapons were of little use in breaking through fort walls. To get around this difficulty, the attackers tried to mine the fort walls, or to ram down the fort gates. They also cannonaded the fort by hurling stones and fireballs into it with catapults, and they shot at targets inside the fort by raising earthen mounds as tall as the fort wall and mounting cannons on them. Mahmud Ghazni is said to have hurled sacks of live serpents into an enemy fort by using catapults. The besiegers also used zigzag trenches or covered trenches to approach the fort walls without exposing themselves to enemy missiles.
Typical of the attack on a fort was Ibrahim Lodi’s siege of Gwalior. According to Yadgar, the sultan had ‘trenches dug [alongside the fort] in which he sheltered his men whilst he made his approaches, and distributed several batteries amongst his officers. He then projected fiery missiles, or shells, into the fort.’ But none of these measures was particularly effective, as the defenders on the fort walls countered them by throwing down heavy stones or ignited bundles of cloth on the attackers. ‘Hindus filled bags with cotton steeped in oil, which they ignited and threw down upon the enemy,’ states Yadgar. Similarly, during the eighth century Arab conquest of Sind, according to Chach-nama, ‘the garrison [in the local raja’s fort] began to beat drums and sound clarions, and they threw down from the ramparts and bastions stones from mangonels and ballistas, [shot] arrows, and [hurled] javelins’ at the assailants.
Quite often the only means of reducing a fort was to starve its defenders to submission, but that took a long time, for forts were usually well-stocked with provisions. So it often took several weeks or even several months, to capture a fort. Sometimes the only means of capturing a fort was by bribing some of its defenders.
ONE OF THE puzzles of the history of early medieval India is why the Hindu kings of the age were invariably routed in battle by Muslim armies, first by the Arabs, then by the Turko-Afghans in North India, and in the peninsula by the Deccan sultans, even though the rajas usually had more extensive territories, greater population and resources and much larger armies than the sultans. Devaraya II, the mid-fifteenth century king of Vijayanagar, once posed this puzzle to his courtiers. The courtiers then discussed the issue in detail among themselves, and came to the conclusion that the sultans invariably won their battles because of the superiority of their cavalry and archers.
This was not quite true. There was no difference at all in the quality of the horses used by Bahmani sultans and Vijayanagar rajas, for in both cases the horses were imported from the Middle East and Central Asia. As for cavalrymen and archers, their quality difference in the two armies could not have been the crucial factor in their military fortunes, as is evident from the fact that the induction of a large number of Muslim cavalrymen and archers into the Vijayanagar army did not make any significant difference in the outcome of its battles with Bahmani. Except Krishnadeva and Ramaraya, hardly any of the other Vijayanagar kings was ever victorious in his battles against the sultans. Equally puzzling is why the Delhi sultans in turn were defeated by the smaller invading forces of Timur and of Babur.
Apparently the size of the army and the quality of its mounts and equipments were not the decisive factors in the outcome of battles. What was decisive was the army’s spirit. And discipline. ‘The princes of the house of Bahmani maintained themselves by superior valour only, for in power, wealth and extent of country the rajas of Vijayanagar were greatly their superiors,’ observes Ferishta. Hindu armies—particularly their vast infantry contingents— were just mobs, with hardly any military training. The immense size of the Hindu armies was often more a disadvantage than an advantage.
Occasionally there were some efforts to tighten the discipline of the Hindu soldiers, and to rouse their martial spirit by instilling in them religious fervour, as in the Muslim armies. But these do not seem to have yielded any significant change in the fortunes of Hindu armies. Thus, according to Ferishta, Bukka I in his battle against Bahmani sultan Muhammad Shah ‘commanded the Brahmins to deliver every day to the troops discourses on the meritoriousness of slaughtering the Mohammedans, in order to excite [their zeal] . . . He ordered them to describe the butchery of cows, the insults to sacred images, and the destruction of temples [committed by Muslims].’ Despite this harangue by Brahmins, Bukka lost the battle.
This was the usual outcome of the battles between rajas and sultans. And the frequent defeats that rajas suffered at the hands of sultans dispirited and demoralised Hindu armies. They often engaged in battle expecting defeat, and they were therefore often more ready to flee than to fight. In contrast, the confidence of victory and the prospect of plunder galvanised the Muslim armies.
Yet another reason for the defeat of the Hindu armies was that they were not cohesive or well-disciplined forces. Even though the armies of the sultans were also not cohesive forces—their soldiers were racially diverse, and they had a good number of Hindus of different castes and sects in them—they were far more tightly organised and disciplined than the armies of the rajas. There was no integrating spirit at all in the Hindu armies, no unifying emotional bond between the soldiers and their raja. Besides the caste divisions of the Hindu society also divided the Hindu army. Soldiers of different castes would not even sit together for a meal. In personal valour Hindu soldiers were quite probably in no way inferior to Muslim soldiers, but Hindu soldiers were not trained to fight as integrated units, so they lacked group discipline, and were consequently weak as an army. Even in the case of the renowned martial valour of the Rajput soldier, what mattered to him was not so much the victory of the army as the demonstration of his personal heroism. His view, as al-Biruni puts it, was that ‘if he conquers, he obtains power and good fortune. If he perishes, he obtains paradise and bliss.’ The outcome of the battle therefore did not matter much to him.
THERE WAS NO spirit of unity at all among the people of any state in early medieval India, to bind together the king and the people and the army. This was how it was in Hindu as well as Muslim kingdoms. But the armies of the sultanates—their dominant Muslim soldiers anyway—were united in their religious fervour and in their aggressive spirit as conquerors ruling over an alien subject people. There was no such galvanising spirit in the armies of most Hindu kingdoms. Their soldiers were fighting for pay and plunder, not for their king or for any large cause. The soldiers belonged to their caste, not to their kingdom, especially as the kingdoms, unlike the castes, were ephemeral entities. What happened to their king—whether he won or lost the battle— made hardly any difference in the lives of the common people, for the state played only a peripheral role in their lives.
This absence of any emotional bond between Hindu soldiers and their raja was evident even in the battles that rajas waged against sultans. Turks were of course an alien people, and belonged to an alien religion, but even that made very little difference in the lives of the common people, to rouse their spirit against them. The common people, even the rajas, viewed Turks as just one of the many diverse people in the subcontinent, each belonging to a different race, tribe, religion, sect, or caste, and each speaking a different language. The absence of antagonism among Indians towards Turks was also because there was hardly any interaction between these two people, for Turks were almost entirely confined to urban centres, while the preponderant majority of Indians lived in villages into which the Turkish rule barely intruded. The Turkish invasion of India therefore did not make any notable difference in the lives of the common people of India, and it roused no strong feeling of antagonism among them against Turks. They were of course exploited by the Turkish rulers, but then they were exploited by the Hindu rulers as well.
There was no awareness among Indians, among people or kings, of the radically different and historic nature of the Turkish invasion—that the Turkish invasion, unlike all the previous invasions of India by foreigners, entailed the displacement of virtually the entire traditional political class of India, and, even more importantly, the superimposition of a foreign civilisation and religion over Indian civilisation and religion. This lack of awareness meant that there was no general, united opposition among rajas against sultans. Even when Turks were rolling up Hindu kingdoms one after the other, rajas and chieftains went on with their usual endless petty squabbles and fights among themselves, as if nothing whatever in their world had changed, while everything had in fact changed radically. Not surprisingly, there were many instances of senior Hindu officers betraying their rajas to sultans, as if they were merely shifting their allegiance from one local ruler to another local ruler. And it was common for Indians to serve Turks as informers and guides. And once the Delhi Sultanate was established, multitudes of Hindus would serve the sultans in various administrative and military capacities without any antipathy whatever.
The pervasive attitude of fatalism among Indians of all classes was yet another factor affecting the spirit of Indian armies—victory and defeat were not in their hands, they believed; whatever was destined to happen would happen. This inculcated a negativist, defeatist attitude in Indian soldiers. They lacked the confident aggressiveness essential for success in battle. The enervating climate of India also played a role in desiccating the martial spirit of Indians. In the case of the Delhi Sultanate, regular fresh arrivals of men from Central Asia reinvigorated its army periodically, even as earlier migrants slowly lost their vigour and spirit. Not surprisingly, the dwindling of fresh arrivals of foreigners in the later part of the Sultanate history greatly weakened the kingdom.
VICTORY IN A BATTLE in medieval India was immediately followed by the victorious soldiers frenziedly rampaging through the enemy camp and the enemy country, indiscriminately slaughtering enemy soldiers as well as the common people, even women and children, and pillaging whatever valuables they could find, to glut their bloodlust and their lust for plunder. And this was, for the common soldiers, among Hindus as well as Muslims, the real reward for risking their lives in battle. Says al-Biruni about Mahmud Ghazni’s Indian campaigns: ‘Mahmud utterly ruined the prosperity of the country, and performed there wonderful exploits, by which Hindus became like atoms and dust, and scattered in all directions.’ Similarly, when Vijayanagar once invaded Ahmadnagar, its soldiers, according to Ferishta, ‘committed the most outrageous devastations, burning and razing buildings, putting up their horses in mosques, and performing their idolatrous worship in holy places.’ In the frenzy of war, soldiers often did not even spare their coreligionists. Thus when Muhammad Tughluq once stormed into Devagiri to suppress a rebellion there, his soldiers plundered ‘the inhabitants of Devagiri, Hindus and Muslims, traders and soldiers’ without any discrimination, reports Barani.
This mode of military operation persisted in India till late medieval times. Thus we repeatedly come across phrases like ‘attack and lay waste the country’, ‘ravage the country from end to end’, ‘kill and ravage as much as possible’, ‘plunder and lay waste all the country,’ ‘plunder and destroy every inhabited place’, in the orders given to the Mughal army during the reign of Shah Jahan, as recorded by the contemporary chronicler Abdul-Hamid Lahauri. The conditions in the countryside around the battlefield, as well as in conquered cities, usually remained anarchic for several months after a battle. Thus Caesar Frederic, a sixteenth-century Venetian traveller in India, was held up for seven months in Vijayanagar after the battle of Talikota, as brigands were then rampaging through the land.
Fair treatment of the defeated enemy was uncommon in medieval India, the attitude of the victor being that he who is an enemy today could be an enemy again tomorrow, so it was best to exterminate him. Theirs was a feral relationship. Sometimes the defeated king and his chief officers were gibbeted, as a warning to other potential enemies. Often the enemy soldiers were herded into prison camps and sold as slaves. Muhammad Ghuri during one of his Indian campaigns is said to have captured so many of the enemy soldiers that they glutted the slave market, and their price fell so sharply that they had to be sold for just a dinar each. It was only very rarely that the victor treated the people of a conquered region with fairness and compassion, as Krishnadeva, according to Nuniz, is said to done when he captured Raichur.
Sometimes a raja, defeated by a sultan, became a Muslim, even ate beef, to save his life and throne, as a king of Jammu is said to have done once. ‘Among these infidels there is no greater crime and abomination than eating the flesh of a cow or killing a cow, but he ate the flesh in the company of Muslims,’ writes Timur in his autobiography. Often the defeated raja gave one of his daughters in marriage to the victor as a peace offering.
There were however several exceptions to such servile conduct, instances of Hindu kings preferring death to the humiliation of defeat and servitude. According to Al-Utbi, ‘there is a custom among . . . [some Hindu kings] that if any of them is taken prisoner by an enemy . . . it is not lawful for him to continue to reign . . . [So king Jayapala of Punjab, on being captured in war and later released by Mahmud Ghazni, decided that] death by cremation was preferable to shame and dishonour. So he commenced with shaving off his hair, and then threw himself upon the fire till he was burnt.’
A variation of this practice was jauhar, mass ritual suicide by the residents of a fort in imminent danger of being captured by the enemy. This involved the women and children of the raja, as well as the women and children of his nobles, immolating themselves, voluntarily or by force, in a funeral pyre built in the fort, and then the men storming out to fight the enemy, to kill and be killed.
The first known account of this practice is in Chach-nama. The custom was probably introduced into India by Central Asian migrants in the late classical period, and seems to have been initially confined to Rajputs, who were mostly migrants. In time the custom spread to the ruling class of some other people also. Thus, according to Battuta, the raja of Kampili in Karnataka, on the verge of his castle being stormed by the army of Muhammad Tughluq, ‘commanded a great fire to be prepared and lighted. Then . . . he said to his wives and daughters, “I am going to die, and such of you as prefer it, do the same.” Then it was seen that each one of these women washed herself, rubbed her body with sandalwood paste, kissed the ground before the raja . . . and threw herself upon the pyre. All perished. The wives of his nobles, ministers, and chief men imitated them, and other women also did the same. The raja, in his turn, washed, rubbed himself with sandalwood paste, and took his arms, but did not put on his breastplate. Those of his men who resolved to die with him followed his example. Then they sallied forth to meet the troops of the sultan, and fought till every one of them fell dead.’