The Military System of the Marathas, with a Brief Account of Their Maritime Activities c5.2

c5.2

Of the military organisation of the Marathas in the early times we know next to nothing. They must have followed the Chalukya banner and later fought under the valiant Rashtrakuta kings; that they were good fighters is beyond doubt, for Hiuen Tsang was highly impressed with their warlike qualities. He sang the praises of the Maratha warriors but how they were armed and accoutred, how they were paid in peace time and mobilised in times of war, whether they had any regular cadre of officers and any military tactics of their own the Chinese pilgrim either did not know or did not think fit to record.¹ After the Chalukyas and the Rashtrakutas came the Yadava and the Silahara dynasties, both of undoubted Maratha origin.² The latter ruled over small principalities in the Konkan and Karhad but the kingdom of the former was of considerable extent. In the few inscriptions that have come down to us the Yadava kings boast of their huge elephants and mention also their Dandanayakas. But these were common features of all Indian armies of those days, and the fact that the kingdom collapsed at the first attack delivered by an external foe does not argue well for its military capacity. Nor do we find any trace in the chronicles of the Turkish conquest of the Deccan of those harassing tactics that the Marathas of the seventeenth century used with such remarkable success against the imperial army of Delhi. Ramchandra Deva, the last independent Yadava king, became a feudatory of the Turkish ruler of Delhi after his numerous forces had been beaten by a small Muhammadan army. His son-in-law made an unsuccessful attempt to throw off the Muhammadan yoke and after his defeat we lose sight of the Marathas for centuries. They do not reappear on the scene till the fall of the Bahmani kingdom. But in the meantime they had not been idle. They had lost their political independence but their country had not been completely conquered. The physical features of their land formed a natural bulwark, while their villages, though few and scattered, were each provided with a defending wall. The Deshmukhs¹ or petty feudal lords could defy an invading army for months in their impregnable strongholds perched on the summit of inaccessible hills. They had no exaggerated regard for national honour for the idea of nationality was yet unborn, and as practical people they were not reluctant to acknowledge the suzerainty of the Muhammadan Prince, provided that the latter guaranteed to them peaceful possession of their hereditary lands and hereditary rights. The Muhammadan conqueror on his side recognised the limits of his own supremacy and did not seek to extend them. Thus the Maratha chiefs continued to exercise their petty sovereignty over their hill-girt principalities, long after the Yadava and the Silahara princes had made way for a stronger military power from the North.