The Social and Military Position of the Ruling Caste in Ancient India, as Represented by the Sanskrit Epic c2.s5.55

c2.s5.55

To return to the Epic: At sunrise, or before, the king holds a short conference with the commander-in-chief, and either selects a battle-array himself, or directs the commander to do so. There is of course at times a doubt as to which form is preferable; and we find in one instance that the king himself insists on the long and slender line, while his best knight recommends the solid phalanx; for the chief officers are present at the conference. There seem to be no party or national orders. Each side selects one of the current forms, occasionally choosing one day the form that defeated them when chosen by the other the day before. If anticipated, the commander scrutinizes the foe's orders before deciding his own. After a selection has been made, the troops advance in different companies and regiments.‡ We must pause here to ask what is the assumed distribution of the forces. We have, according to tradition, two different arithmetical progressions in differentiating the number of forces in the various bodies. According to a report which seems entirely theoretical (xii. 100. 31), the men are subdivided into groups of a thousand with a general at the head; of a hundred with a captain; of ten with a sergeant. This bears a close resemblance to the distribution of royal officers throughout the realm, the names being similar. In the one case we have ‘a lord of a thousand villages,’ ‘lord of one hundred,’ and ‘lord of ten;’ in the other ‘lord of a thousand men,’ etc. This distribution is not known in the fighting scenes, but neither is the following; and we can draw no definitive results as to the antiquity of division in either case. Vasishtha’s division (see the note below) would imply that a decimal arrangement was the base of the army’s make-up. The other arithmetical progression is mainly by three, instead of ten. Here we also find that the names designating the different bodies are not known as such, technically speaking, in the battle-scenes. What is called a company may mean a whole division or a whole army. Moreover, the numbers are in quantity absurd, when we remember that the Kurus are said to have put upon the field eleven times the highest number in the list, which should make an army of more than two hundred thousand chariots, as many elephants, more than a million men, and over half a million horses. Such exaggeration is, however, common in the Epic; and, by comparing several accounts of the numbers wounded in different cases, it will be seen that we often have to divide by a hundred or a thousand to reach a reasonable limit. The same absurdity is repeated at the end of our war. After almost countless hosts had been slain, the poor remnant on each side was as follows: On the Kuru side there remained eleven thousand chariots, ten thousand seven hundred elephants, fully two hundred thousand horses, and thirty million men.* The Pāṇḍu army (originally seven ‘whole armies’) now consisted of six thousand chariots, as many elephants, ten thousand horses, and ten million foot-soldiers. Such was the *balaṃ śeṣam*, ‘remnant,’ on the morning of the last day (ix. 8. 41.). The opening forces are found in as extraordinary sums; where, to instance only one case, the number of *vaçavartinaḥ* (or soldiers brought into the field by one ally) implies one hundred thousand chariots (vi. 17 and 18). The systematic scheme of what an army is to be can, therefore, be looked upon only as a very late attempt to make technical divisions of which the true Epic knows nothing. The list may, however, be of interest. The name of the force stands to the left.