The Army of the Indian Moghuls: Its Organization and Administration c15.32

c15.32

*Karnātakī*. These must have been men from the south of India, the word Karnātak by the Moghul usage applying to the whole of peninsular India south of the Tungahbhadra, except Adonī (J. Rennell, “Memoir” (Peninsula), 20). I suppose these men in the Moghul army were of the same class as those who formed our first sepoy battalions in the south of India. In Northern India, which they reached in 1757 as part of Clive’s force sent for the relief of Calcutta, they were known as Talingahs, that is, men of the Talagū country; and Talingah is still the common village word in Hindūstān for a sepoy in one of our regiments. De la Flotte, 258, who served in South India from 1758 to 1760, says the infantry (no doubt the same men as these Karnātakīs) carried on their heads a bundle of rice and their cooking utensils, their women carrying the husband’s sword and other arms. Those were a very long and heavy matchlock called kaitoke (ante, p. 107). The whole family followed.