The Army of the Indian Moghuls: Its Organization and Administration c12.s1.36

c12.s1.36

*Deg* (Mortars). We find in the official manuals a class of men among the *Ahshām*, styled *Deg-andāz*, literally “pot-throwers”. In present usage *deg* denotes a mortar, and it may have meant the same at the end of the 17th and beginning of the 18th century, when the manuals referred to were drawn up. But it seems to me more probable that these men carried some sort of fire-pot or hand-grenade, which they threw when two armies were coming to close quarters.