The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c28.149

v1.c28.149

According to these accounts the military might consist of troops of different kinds, namely hereditary or feudatory troops, hired troops, gild levies, and forest tribes⁴. In the first named, which were regarded as the most trustworthy, we may doubtless recognise the old Kshatriya division of society, connected by caste, and ultimately by race, with the king himself, such as in later times we find them in the quasi-feudal states of Rājputāna. In the second class also the Kshatriya element would probably predominate, though here there would be, no doubt, a career for any bold adventurer with a strong arm and a soldierly bent. As concerns the gild troops, which are plainly regarded as having a chiefly defensive character⁵, there is some room for doubt: were they merely the ordinary trade gilds, as an organisation for calling out the people for service in time of invasion, a sort of militia or *landwehr*? Or were they quasi-military corporations⁶, such as the modern Brīñjāras, whose business was to supply merchants and others with armed protection of a quasi-professional character? While refraining from a decisive pronunciation, we cannot but incline in the circumstances to the former alternative, for which the gilds of medieval Europe supply a fair analogy, and which is supported by the defensive character of the force. In any case the gild troops were regarded as in military value inferior to the men-at-arms. The forest tribes, employed like the Red Indians in the French and English wars of North America, or like other untrained auxiliaries in the armies of Greece and Rome, were destined for the service of distracting or detaining the enemy rather than for the actual crises of campaigns¹.