The Social and Military Position of the Ruling Caste in Ancient India, as Represented by the Sanskrit Epic c2.s5.94

c2.s5.94

The first battle began in the first hours of the first day after each army had arrived at its respective camping-ground.* The Pāndus are encamped in the West; the Kurus, in the East. The battle-field lies near the city of the Kurus, Hāstinapur. The latter stand on the defensive. Each force, with its general soldiers (*yodhāḥ*, *sāinikāḥ*) and officers (*bala-mukhyāḥ*, etymologically equivalent to ‘captains,’ *mukha* meaning here *caput*), has its grand commander-in-chief (*senāpati* or *vāhinīpati*),† under whom stand the generals that command the different ‘whole armies,’ or hosts, complete in themselves and so considered, brought by the allies. Such an army within an army was called the *akṣauhiṇī*, and its general was the *pati* or lord of that division, a term sometimes applied to the commander-in-chief himself. The commander-in-chief was in fact nothing but an ‘army-lord’ raised to the position of general superintendent, and temporarily exalted over his equals, the ‘lords’ of each special army. For the special generals were usually simply the kings who had come as allies, and each commanded his own home force, which he had brought with him.‡ An honorary title of either a king-general or of the commander-in-chief was also *yūthapa*, ‘guardian of troops,’ indicative of the fact that the army was parcelled into generic troops, the elephants apart from chariots, the foot-soldiers by themselves. This is often the arrangement made; and the more artificial combination, by which each car was surrounded by so many men, and so many cars were distributed to so many elephants, each squad of this sort containing all the fighting elements and making no longer troops in kind, I think a later as a more artificial formation.§