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The Political Institutions and Theories of the Hindus: A Study in Comparative Politics c11.t1: 1. Militarism in Hindu Culture

The Political Institutions and Theories of the Hindus: A Study in Comparative Politics c11.t1

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English

1. Militarism in Hindu Culture

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Indeed the Charlemagnes and Fredericks, by whose *parâkrama* (prowess) the frontiers of India were advanced so far as to include, on several occasions, Afghanistan and Central Asia on the land side, and the islands of the Indian Ocean to the south, had their hands always full with the problem of training and equipping the soldiers and sailors. The profession of arms and the command of the fleet called forth as a matter of course the administrative capabilities of Young India from age to age, — in the northern, eastern, central, western and southern provinces. And the spirit that pervaded these disciplined forces is what came out in the fourth gymnosophist's reply to Alexander's query. Alexander asked him as to why he had persuaded Sabbas (Śambhu) to revolt. Because, as we read in Plutarch's *Lives*, said the Hindu sage, "I wished him either to live with honor or die as a coward deserves."¹

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¹ Plutarch's *Life of Alexander*.

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And this was not an empty word of the philosopher cited like a maxim, as it were, from the *Mahâbhârata*. We are told by Plutarch that Alexander experienced no less trouble from the priests, preachers, and religious teachers of India than from the warriors who “used to fight for pay”. It was the endeavour of the “philosophers” to fix a mark of infamy upon those princes, who, like the king of Taxila, declared for the Macedonian and became traitors to Indian independence. The free republican nations also were excited by what appear to be the learned and priestly classes, i. e., the *intelligentsia*, to take up arms against the alien invaders. Many are the Hindu philosophers who therefore had to espouse the martyr’s doom meted out to them by Alexander’s vindictive court-martial.

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In order to appreciate the age-long militarism of the Hindus and their organization of the general staff it is necessary to have an idea of the Roman institutions of national defence and war-machinery.¹ In B. C. 225 the republic placed 65,000 soldiers on the field and had 55,000 in reserve at Rome.² At Trebia (B. C. 218), as Polybius writes in his *History of the Roman Conquest from B. C. 264—146*, the strength of the army was 38,400. And the largest force that the Romans are known to have mustered during their republican period was that under Scipio for the Second Punic (Hannibalian) War (B. C. 218—202).³ On this occasion the army consisted sometimes of 18, 20, or even 23 legions. A “legion” at that time was made up of 4,000 or 5,000 soldiers, and of this number about 300 or 400 constituted the cavalry.

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¹ Greenidge’s *Roman Public Life*, pp. 68—74 (Roman army according to the Servian classification).

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² *Enc. Brit.* (Article on Roman Army).

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³ Ramsay’s *Roman Antiquities*, p. 432.

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In point of numbers the Roman armies must have been regarded as pigmy indeed or but as “pocket armies” by the generalissimos of Hindu nationalities. For, the fighting hordes maintained by the states of India appear to have always been formidable in size. A “standing army” of half a million was nothing extraordinary in military India’s psychology. Among the fragmentary notices of the nations, some of them difficult to identify accurately, that we can glean from Megasthenes’ stories (*c* B. C. 300) we find that the Pândyas⁴ of the extreme south who were ruled by women had an army of 150,000 foot and 500 elephants. The ruler of Gujarat⁴ on the Arabian Sea coast was in command of 1,600 elephants, 150,000 infantry and 5,000 horse; and the force wielded by the sovereign of the races⁵ between the Ganges and the Himalayas, occupying the districts of north Bihar, north Bengal, and possibly western Assam, was composed of 50,000 infantry, 4,000 cavalry and 400 elephants.

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⁴ Mc Crindle’s *Anc. Ind.* (*Meg.*, LVI), 147.

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⁵ *Ibid*, 138.

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In Plutarch’s *Life of Alexander* we learn, further, that the king of Magadha (the Gangaridae and Prasii nations on the banks of the Ganges) in Eastern India was master of 20,000 horse, 200,000 foot, 2,000 chariots, and 3,000 or 4,000 elephants. Evidently this ruler was one of the “nine Nandas”. The size of one of the smallest Hindu armies can be given from Pliny’s *Natural History*.¹ It belonged to another people of the eastern provinces of India, viz., the Gangaridae Kalingoe, ancestors of the modern Oriyas. Their king with capital at Protalis had 60,000 infantry, 1,000 horse, and 700 elephants “always caparisoned for battle”. But, as usual, in regard to most of the periods of Hindu military and naval history, authentic information is wanting about the system of discipline, salaries, hierarchy of officers and other items of the War Office, except what may be gathered from the *nîti-śâstras* and other literature on polity.

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¹ Book VI, Ch. xxii; *Vide also Meg.* LVI, B.

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