The Army of the Indian Moghuls: Its Organization and Administration c18: Chapter XVI
The Army of the Indian Moghuls: Its Organization and Administration c18
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Chapter XVI
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Having sprung from a Central Asian nomad horde, the early chiefs of Taimur’s race were perpetually on the move, accompanied by their army. This traditional habit was maintained in India by the earlier and more active emperors of that house ¹. From Bābar to Bahādur Shāh, they were seldom long in one place, and the greater part of their life was passed under canvas. For example, during the five years of his reign Bahādur Shāh never slept in any building, and did not enter one in the day time on more than one or two occasions. From this habit it resulted that the empire had never had a fixed capital, the only capital was the place at which the sovereign might happen to be ², and as a consequence, the whole apparatus of government was carried wherever the emperor went. All the great officers of state followed him, and all the imperial records moved with them. Thus a Moghul army, where the emperor was present, was weighted with the three-fold impedimenta of an army, a court, and a civil executive. It is thus easy to account for the immense size to which their camps gradually extended.
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¹ The original nomadic habits of the royal house are betokened by the singular habit, that the wives of the emperors were delivered lying upon a saddle-cloth. The authority for this is found in a letter said to have been written in 1137 H. by Nizām-ul-Mulk to Muḥammad Shāh (“Asiatic Misc.” i, 490).
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² Or as the Romans said, “Ubi Imperator, ibi Roma”.
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*Mīr Manzil*. To preserve order in the audience-hall and its approaches, and to regulate the access of the public thereto, there were a number of guards (*yasāwal*), at whose head were several officers styled *Mīr Tuzak* (literally, Lords of Arrangement). The first of these officials was one of the great officers of State, and it was his duty when the court was on the march, to fix the route, to decide on the marches, and to proceed ahead, select a place for encampment, and lay out the site of the various camps and the lines of shops (*bāzār*). When carrying out these duties, the first Mīr Tuzak was more commonly known as *Mīr Manzil*, Lord of the Stages.
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*Transport.* The means of transport, consisting of elephants, camels, pack-ponies, bullocks, bullock-carts and porters, were only provided officially for the imperial tents and establishments; every one else was left to make his own arrangements. Each soldier did his best for himself. The baggage was known as *bahīr o bangāh* or *partāl*. In Ashob, fol. 265*a*, we find *Partāl* used for the means of transporting, instead for the baggage itself: *Partāl-i-aksare-i-eshān shutarān-i-Bakhtī-i-aṣīl wa khātirhāe, ya‘nī ushturhāe kata‘-i-khūsh-jins-i-Wilāyatī*. *Bakhtī* is the large, two-humped or Bactrian camel.
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*Commissariat.* In an Indian army the commissariat was left very much to take care of itself. The imperial kitchen fed a certain number of palace servants and some armed guards, matchlockmen, and artificers. There was also a charitable kitchen kept up, at the emperor’s expense, and called the *Langarkhāna*. In the same way, a chief distributed cooked food to the men more especially attached to his person. Outside these limited circles, every man was left to provide for himself, buying from day to day enough for his daily wants from the numerous dealers, or *banyas*, who followed the army. These men’s huts or shops were erected in long double lines, so as to form temporary streets. These are the so-called *bāzārs* or markets (Bernier, 381). Each great leader had his own bazars, and in these were to be found not only dealers in grain, but merchants and artificers of every sort and kind.
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*Banjāra* or *Birinjārā*. The supplies of grain were brought in on the backs of bullocks by the wandering dealers known as Banjārahs or Brinjārahs. There are two derivations alleged for this word, 1) H. *banij*, trade, plus the affix *ārah*, denoting a doer or agent (Steingass, 201), and 2) P. *birinj*, rice, *ār*, *ārā*, the root of *āwardan*, to bring (Steingass, 179). Fitzclarence, 93, says “It is by these people that the Indian armies in the field are fed, and they are never injured by either army. The grain is taken from them, but invariably paid for. They encamp for safety every evening in a regular square formed of the bags of grain, of which they construct a breastwork. They and their families are in the centre and the oxen are made fast outside. Guards with matchlocks and spears are placed at the corners, and their dogs do duty as advanced posts. I have seen them with droves of 50,000 bullocks. They do not move above two miles an hour, as the cattle are allowed to graze as they proceed on the march”. On these men, see also Thorn, 85, E. Moor, 131, and M. Wilks, iii, 209.
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*Fodder*. The grass for the horses was provided, as it still is, by sending men out to gather it. If they had a pony, the grass was loaded on it and brought in; if not, it was carried in on the man’s head (Cambridge, “War”, Introd. vi). These men were either engaged as servants by the troopers or worked on their own account, (Bernier, 381). With an active enemy about, these followers were often cut off, or even frightened into not going out at all. Camels were, of course, sent out to pick up what they could in the country round the camp (idem). These, too, were often raided by the enemy.
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*Foraging*. In addition to those brought in by traders, supplies were also added to by raiding and plundering in the country through which the army marched. Even in the best time of the monarchy and under the strictest commanders, the course of an army was marked by desolation. These was great destruction of growing coops when the army passed through a fairly cultivated country. Compensation under the name of *pāemālī*, "foot-treading", was certainly allowed, according to the rules, in the shape of a remission of revenue on the land injured, but this must have been a very incomplete indemnification for the loss of the crop.
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*Scarcity and other sufferings.* An army supplied in the way indicated above was peculiarly liable to have its supplies cut off; then followed at once scarcity, high prices, and if the stoppage continued, death from starvation. Mention of these difficulties is seldom absent long from the pages of native historians. Great heat and want of water were also frequent grounds of complaint, and from one who went through the march of Āʿzam Shāh from Gwāliyar to Dholpur in June 1707, escapes the bitter cry, "May God Omnipotent never subject even my enemy to such a day as we then passed through" (*Aḥwāl-i-khawāqin*, fol. 11*a*). Again in Bahādur Shāh’s operations against the Sikh leader, Bandah, in December 1710, he was much hampered by the heavy rain and the intense cold, many of the transport animals being lost. A graphic picture of campaigning difficulties, even in the case of a force which was finally victorious, is given by Khāfī Khān, ii, 888. Nizām-ul-mulk on his way in July 1720 to attack ʿĀlim ʿAlī Khān, governor of Aurangābād, passed several days in extreme discomfort, exposed to incessant rain and in the middle of deep black mud. The constant rain and the swollen streams stopped all supplies, the Mahrattas plundered close round the camp, not an animal could be sent out or brought in. For many days the only food of the cattle was the pounded leaves and young shoots of trees; "the smell even of grass or corn did not reach the four-footed animals", and many of them, standing up to their shoulders in mud, starved to death. One rupee would only buy 2 to 4 lbs. of flour. Referring to a century earlier, Sir Thomas Roe, as quoted by Cambridge, "War", Introd.
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vii, gives a very lifelike description of the sufferings of a march through woods and over mountains.
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*Flight of Inhabitants.* Colonel Wilks, i, 308, note, speaking of the south of India, says the inhabitants of a country deserted their homes for the hills and woods upon the approach of an invader, taking with them whatever food they could carry, and often perishing of want. Such an exodus was not unknown in Northern India, as for instance, when the Sikhs first rose in 1710, and invaded the Upper Jamnah-Ganges *duābah* and the country north and east of Lāhor, the inhabitants, especially the Mahomedans, fled at their approach. More usually, however, the peasants continued with tranquil unconcern to plough, sow, or reap within a stone's throw of a raging battle. Like true sons of the East, they "bowed low before the blast" and "let the legions thunder past". What had they to hope or fear from defeat or victory?