The Army of the Indian Moghuls: Its Organization and Administration c15.42

c15.42

Artificers, or other men classed under Infantry. Of these there were a number, artisans and labourers, who can scarcely be designated soldiers at all; they were really camp-followers, though they may possibly have carried some sort of weapons for their own protection, just as we furnish litter-bearers with swords when on active service. The *Beldārs* were used to make difficult roads passable (Horn, 24, *‘Alamgīr-nāmah*, 653); they also threw up the field-works usually made to protect the guns. One duty of the carpenters and axemen was to cut a road through the thorny jungle with which most petty strongholds were surrounded. The use of some of the others, as bearing on the service of the army, are obvious enough; others, less so. Dr. Horn, 24, seems to translate *beldār* by “beilträger”, a word meaning, I believe, an axeman. But *bel* is a spade, hoe, or mattock, and a *beldār* is a digger up of earth, an excavator, not an axeman.