The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c28.154

v1.c28.154

The main divisions of the army were the elephant corps, the cavalry, and the foot: to which should be added the foragers and camp-followers. There was a scientific distinction of vanguard, centre, rear, wings, reserve, and camp, with elaborate discussions of formations on the march and in battle, attack and defence, and the value and employment of the several arms². Equipment was in considerable variety, including fixed and mobile engines, such as ‘hundred-slayers’³. Such instruments were, of course, familiar even to the early nations of Mesopotamia, as were also the construction and siege of forts. The Indian forts were, as we have seen, systematically designed, with ditches, ramparts, battlements, covered ways, portcullises, and water-gates; and in the assault the arts of mining, countermining, flooding mines were employed no less than the devices of diplomacy⁴. In short, the Indians possessed the art of war. If all their science failed them against Alexander, and against subsequent invaders, we may conjecture, in accordance with other aspects of Indian thought, the reason that there was too much of it. In the formation adopted by Porus, the elephants and chariots in front and the infantry in the rear, we may perhaps detect an agreement with the precepts of the books⁵. As regards the ethics of fighting, the Greeks received an impression of something not unchivalrous; and here too we may recall the written precepts as to fair fighting, not attacking the wounded or those already engaged or the disarmed, and sparing those who surrendered⁶.