The Political Institutions and Theories of the Hindus: A Study in Comparative Politics c11.t7: 7. Imperial Armies: Hindu and Roman
The Political Institutions and Theories of the Hindus: A Study in Comparative Politics c11.t7
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7. Imperial Armies: Hindu and Roman
c11.t7.1
The mind of military India quickly shook off the nightmare of Macedonian invasion (B. C. 327—324). Nay, Hindus lost no time in rising to liberate the Punjab from the yoke of Alexander's army of occupation (B. C. 322). The force that accomplished this expulsion of European garrisons from the "land of the five rivers" was the nucleus of what in a decade or two developed into the standing army "on daily pay", as Pliny puts it, of Chandra-gupta, the founder of the Maurya House of the Magadhan Empire. And when Seleukos the Greco-Syrian had to submit to the Hindu monarch and cede Afghanistan and Baluchistan to the victor (B. C. 303) the Maurya army was composed of 600,000 infantry, 30,000 cavalry, 9,000 elephants and about 8,000 chariots.⁴ Excluding followers and attendants, but including the archers, three on each elephant, and two fighting men on each chariot, the whole army consisted of 690,000 men. The exact figures of the Maurya naval force are not forthcoming yet.
c11.t7.2
⁴ Pliny's *Natural History*, Book VI, Ch. xxii; Plutarch's *Alexander*; Meg. LVI.
c11.t7.3
Let us here place the military facts from the side of European imperialism. The temporary national militias of republican Rome became a "standing army" for the first time under Augustus.⁵ He bequeathed to Tiberius (A. C. 14—37) probably the largest army that Imperial Rome ever commanded. Besides the praetorian guards and three fleets it was made up of 25 legions (of Roman troops) and 25 legions of *auxilia* (i. e. soldiers furnished by foreign dependents and allies, comparable to the Imperial Service Troops of the feudatory or protected states in British India). And the total force numbered 320,000.⁶ It is clear that the Maurya General Staff had the ability to drill, equip, finance and manipulate more than double the man-power of the imperial-Roman war-machine.
c11.t7.4
⁵ Arnold's *Roman Provincial Administration*, 114.
c11.t7.5
⁶ Ramsay, 432; Arnold, 113.
Linked texts (2)
- Ἰνδική — Λούκιος Φλάουιος Ἀρριανός, Ancient Greek
- Naturalis historia — C. Plinius Secundus, Latin