The Army of the Indian Moghuls: Its Organization and Administration c12.7

c12.7

Horn, 28, quoting from Mīrzā Ḥaidar (Elliot v, 131, 132) says that at the battle of Kanauj in 1540 Humāyūn had 700 pieces (ẓarbzan) drawn each by four pairs of bullocks (these guns fired balls of 4 lb., 304 gr. each). In addition to these were twenty-one heavy guns requiring each eight pairs of oxen, and firing leaden balls ten times as heavy as the others. Erskine, “History”, ii, 186, using the same passage from Mīrzā Ḥaidar, reads “sixty-one (شست و یک) heavy guns, each drawn by sixty (شست) pairs of bullocks”. Ross, “Tarīkh-i-Rashīdī”, 474, has “twenty one (بیست و یک) carriages each drawn by eight (هشت) pairs of bullocks”. Looking to the state of things then existing, I think the number of twenty one is preferable to Erskine’s *sixty-one* heavy guns; but on the other hand the larger number of bullocks (*sixty* and not *eight* pairs) is the more probably correct; the ball thrown being ten times as heavy as that of the smaller pieces, the gun itself must have weighed more, in something like the same proportion, and would have required more than twice as many bullocks to drag it.