Medieval Indian
Armies how really real were those numbers?
Recently I noticed an interesting
discussion in the AE History Forum- Ancient Mediterranean and Europe Section
under the thread Really only 300 Spartans! .
Somewhere down the line, the
discussion veered to the incredibly huge size of the armies said to have been
deployed in the wars fought in ancient times. Maziar
Shahanshah and Sparten
Padishah wondered how the Persians could muster an army of 2.5 million and
worse still maintain them? Was the population of the time big enough to supply
an army of that size?
A similar situation exists in the
Indian context too. The armies mentioned in the Epic battles of ancient India
are incredibly huge .They run into tens of millions of foot- soldiers, horses,
chariots, elephants etc. Even if we assume these battles were not mythical,
they, then, took place too far back in time. There is, therefore, not much use,
in either case, discussing the credibility of the numbers cited there. However,
when we look at the armies of the medieval India
as recorded in history we again run into the same issue-that of credibility.
Armies of Krishna
Deva Raya
Krishna Deva Raya is the most
celebrated name in the history of South India. His
reign (1509 1530A.D) is regarded
as the golden age of the Vijayanagar Empire. Arts, culture, literature, music,
religion etc. flourished under his patronage. The rule of Krishna Deva Raya
also wrote a glorious chapter in Vijayanagar history when his army emerged as
the strongest military power in South India.
Much of our information about his
military campaigns comes from the
accounts of Portuguese travelers Domingos Paes, Nuniz and Castanheda.
Ferno Lopez da Castanheda (1500-1559) a
Portuguese explorer traveled to India in 1528(in the closing years of Krishna Deva
Rayas rule) and authored a book covering events in India from 1497 to 1549 after considerable
research and discussions. His book enjoyed a wide audience and influenced other
writers of the period. According to him, the king at any time could command a
force of one or even two million men, at his will. He also mentions that the
king at all times kept, at his own cost, an establishment of 100,000 horses and
4,000 elephants
Fernao Nuniz a
Portuguese traveler, chronicler and horse trader who spent three years in
Vijayanagara (1535 1537) said that the king in his Raichur campaign( May 1520)
deployed 703,000 foot soldiers, 32,600 cavalry and 551 elephants besides the camp followers, merchants, and "an infinitude of
people" who joined him at a place close to Raichur. The troops advanced in eleven great divisions
or army corps and other troops joined him before Raichur
Abdur Razzaq an ambassador from Persia
to Calicut in India
during the times of Vijayanagar Empire in 15th century put the
strength at 1,100,000 with 1000 or more
elephants.
Around the same time Afanasy Nikitin (1472?),
a Russian traveler and writer who visited India mentions that in the war against Vijaynagar
(1443?) the Bahamani Sultan lead a huge force that included 900,000 foot,
190,000 horses, and 575 elephants
The second volume
of Scott's "History of the Dekhan includes a translation of a journal
kept by an officer in the reign of Aurangzib (1658 to 1707). Writing about
Vijayanagar in former days, at the height of its grandeur and importance, he
says, "They kept an army of 30,000 horses, a million of infantry, and
their wealth was beyond enumeration."
The Venetian merchant and explorer Nicol de Conti, who was in India about a
century earlier than the war in question, while narrating his story to Poggio
Bracciolini(1380 to 1459) mentioned that the Vijayanagar army consisted of "a
million of men and upwards.
It is rather difficult to judge the veracity of the above accounts. All
that we can make out is that the King of Vijayanagar had at his command a vast
resource of men and material. It does not, however, say how well the men were
trained or how destructive the armaments were or even how effective were the
strategies employed.
Perhaps we could agree with unicorn
Praetorian when he says, I think we should at the first sight neglect the
sizes (alleged or quite rational) of the armies and think at the situation of
the time and the field tactics.
Source:
The Forgotten Empire
-Robert Swell
Edited by sreenivasarao s - 11-Apr-2007 at 08:35