Growth of Muslim Population in Medieval India, A.D. 1000–1800 c11.128

c11.128

The efficiency was certainly less. As a matter of fact, the efficiency of every country was necessarily much less in the sixteenth century than in 1914. In medieval India in particular a very substantial portion of the population was exempt from military service. Even so Castanheda says that the Zamorin of Calicut was able "to raise a force of 30,000 men in a single day, and could even bring 100,000 men in the field, completely equipt for war in three days."⁹² Then there were the Nayars on the Malabar coast. The armies of the Bahmani and Vijayanagar kingdoms were in all probability more than a million each. Therefore, proportionately, a larger population than in Europe would have provided Moreland's 'one million' soldiers in South India. Moreland himself says that *"the population of southern territories was at least thirty millions, and probably substantially more"* (Italics mine).⁹³ One fact, however, militates against our having any high estimate of the number of regular troops, for in medieval times "the riff-raff and the rowdy" also used to join contending armies for the love of plunder.⁹⁴ This was as true of the South as of the North. Therefore, the rough ratio of 30 : 1 as suggested by Moreland as the ratio of the population to the armed forces may be adhered to.