The Army of the Indian Moghuls: Its Organization and Administration c13.15

c13.15

*Rahkalah*. In all histories of the later Moghul period we find a word *rahkalah* used in connection with artillery. Literally it means a cart (Shakes. 1203, Hindī). The word *rahkalah* may be heard to this day in the Upper Duāb applied to the smallest size of bullock-cart, one having a platform or body and wheels, but no sides. This cart, also called a *larrī*, is used to carry produce from the fields to the threshing floor, and for similar light work. The word seems also to be in ordinary use in the town of Bombay for a country cart¹. But in historical works it means a field piece or small gun, including of course the vehicle for its transport. These guns were drawn by bullocks. No doubt, as a passage in the *Akhbār-i-muḥabbat*, p. 277, would show, *rahkalah* was strictly speaking the name of the gun-carriage only: *Har do dast dar zer-i-rahkalah burdah, top rā ba rahkalah tā sīnah bardāsht*, “Bringing both hands beneath the *rahkalah*, he lifted both gun (*top*) and carriage (*rahkalah*) as high as his chest”. In ordinary circumstances no such distinction was made, and when we read of the number of *top* and *rahkalah* in an army, we understand thereby so many siege-guns and field pieces. The word *arābah* is distinctly used for a field piece in line 1317 of the Hindī poem by Shrīdhar Murlīdhar of Prāg on the battle between Farrukhsīyar and Jahāndār Shāh, composed c. 1712;