Growth of Muslim Population in Medieval India, A.D. 1000–1800 c6.s1.33

c6.s1.33

In South "the Hindus fought almost nude."²³ Such troops formed the bulk of the armies on both sides, and in any battle these 'naked' soldiers would have been killed in large numbers. Civilian population was always ruthlessly massacred, so the accounts about the South say. We come across wars originating in an after-dinner jest and ending with such slaughter that 'victims on the Hindu side alone were no less than half a million" (A.D. 1336).²⁴ In 1417-18 when Firoz Shah Bahmani invaded Telingana, the Hindus made a general massacre of the Musalmans and erected a platform of their heads.²⁵ The tables were turned in 1423 with the invasion of the Vijayanagar dominions by Ahmad Bahmani, who so overran the country that he used to halt for rest for three days only after he had massacred an instalment of 20,000 men, women and children.²⁶ When such details of the strength of forces deployed and killings among soldiers and civilians are given by contemporary writers (on whose narratives the accounts of Sewell and Wolseley Haig are based), it would not be possible to disbelieve the great losses in war. It is in a decisive battle that casualties are limited because the killing is over in a day or two. But the war between the two kingdoms was indecisive; it was a continual affair for more than a century and a half, and killings and massacres, often on a large scale, were its special feature. That people survived in Telingana and south of the Tungbhadra was due more to the demographic recuperation through natural procreation than to the smallness of the numbers killed. A slight exaggeration here and there does not minimise the enormity of the loss, and details of the campaigns lend support to the data of contemporary writers.