Age of the Nandas and Mauryas c9.s40.12

c9.s40.12

Lastly the war office comprised a board of thirty, functioning in six divisions of five members each. The first division was the admiralty; the second, transport and commissariat providing, among other things, servants to beat the drum, and groom the horses, and mechanists to tend the machines; the remaining four were respectively in charge of infantry, cavalry, war-chariots and the elephants. There were royal stables for the horses and elephants and an arsenal for the arms, ‘because the soldier has to return his arms to the magazine, and his horse and his elephant to the stables’. Horses were broken in by professional trainers forcing them to gallop round and round in a ring, especially when they saw them refractory; the *Arthaśāstra* devotes whole sections to a description of the movements to which the war horses and elephants should be trained, besides describing their proper care in considerable detail¹.