Kaushik Roy - Warfare in Pre-British India: 1500 BCE to 1740 CE

Kaushik Roy

|J Routledge

Tay lor & Francis Group

LONDON AND NEW YORK

First published 2015

by Routledge

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2015 Kaushik Roy

The right of Kaushik Roy to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patent Act 1988.

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Roy, Kaushik.

Warfare in pre-British India, 1500 BCE to 1740 CE / Kaushik Roy.

pages cm. - (Asian states and empires ; 10)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Military art and science-India-History. 2. India-History, Military. I. Title.

U43.I5R69 2015

355.020954-dc23

2014025682

ISBN: 978-0-415-52979-2 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-315-74270-0 (ebk)

Typeset in Times New Roman

by Taylor & Francis Books

This book deals with the pre-1700 era. And at that time, India was coterminous with South Asia. Hence, both these terms have been used interchangeably in this monograph. Despite the fact that armies consumed the largest amount of revenue of the state and were the biggest government employer till 1947, our understanding of pre-modem (read pre-British) warfare in the subcontinent is nebulous. For ideological and political reasons military history is not the in thing within South Asias history circuit. There has been a lot of interest among the general public and also among academicians about the recent India-Pakistan flare-up, but study of history of warfare before the eighteenth century remains marginal. Some British and American historians including this author have tried to understand the linkages between the rise of British Empire in India and the East India Companys military success against the Mughal successor states from the late eighteenth century onwards. However, as one moves further back in Indian history, our understanding of warfare remains an uncharted area. This is partly due to paucity of sources. For the British era, a researcher gets documents stacked which are easily traceable in the archives of Britain and India. In contrast, sources about pre-1700 India are scattered in various libraries and, worse, they are in different languages. And not all of them are translated into English. In fact, the dilemma before a historian working on the preeighteenth-century era is whether he/she is to become a linguist and concentrate on learning different languages or the scholar has to go for learning methodologies in order to interpret the diverse sources for reconstructing a historical account. Besides English, this author can handle Sanskrit, Assami, Bengali, Hindi and Marathi, but not Persian, Urdu and the other regional languages. Hence, on several cases, I have to depend on translated versions. I acknowledge this limitation while writing this volume. Further, in this age of political correctness, if one attempts to analyse the Aryan invasion against the Dravidians, then the South Indians of present-day India might get offended. And if one takes up the pen to study Islamic steppe nomadic invasions, then there is the danger of stoking communal troubles and Hindutva feelings. Studying Islamic intrusion in medieval India as part of the Asian context (which is attempted in this monograph) might go against the dominant interpretation within India that the Mughal Empire was a unique polity characterized by Hindu-Muslim synthesis. This is not to suggest that the Mughal Empire was a communal/Muslim polity. Similarly, the invasion of Sri Lanka by the Tamils during the early medieval era is bound to have repercussion on present-day Hindu Tamil separatist struggle versus Buddhist Ceylonese nationalist attitude. Nevertheless, I feel that a scholars duty is not to go by current political concerns but to understand the past as it was. Overall, this volume takes a longue duree perspective and attempts a cross-cultural analysis. However, it is not merely a textbook. Our historical account is sprinkled with a lot of primary sources. Though the volume follows a linear chronological narrative account, its analytical content is heightened by trying to analyze military affairs through several heuristic devices.

Kaushik Roy Kolkata 2014

First of all, thanks to my friend Peter Lorge who showed interest in this project. Mr Peter Sowden of Routledge also deserves praise for sustaining this book project. And of course Helena Hurd, who tolerated my repeated failure to keep the schedule. I am also grateful to my student Moumita and my exstudents Pratyay and Dipanjan for providing me with some of the obscure sources. I remember the pleasant trip to Amsterdam in 2011 when Professor Dirk Kolff kindly and affectionately provided photocopies of some old journal articles. It goes without saying that the responsibility for all the faults is mine alone. I have written this book on the assumption that its very limitations will encourage someone to write a better volume on this topic. Lastly, I do not know how to thank someone without whom neither writing nor teaching would have been possible. I hope she understands.

Kaushik Roy Kolkata 2014

Map 1 Alexanders route in India

Map 2 Border of Maurya Empire

Map 3 India after the Mauryas

Map 4 Gupta Empire

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