Maharana Pratap of Mewar

Bhadra

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All morals are restrictive be it Vedic or Victorian.
That is what makes something called society. Society is nothing but restrictive.

" Man was born free but he is in chains" .......

The issue is less or more restrictions ....
 

Pratap

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That is what makes something called society. Society is nothing but restrictive.

" Man was born free but he is in chains" .......

The issue is less or more restrictions ....
This quote of French intellectual is made in different context. He was talking about feudal opression not Victorian or Vedic morals. My point is that morals are restrictive and it is not unique to West. I fully support that society needs them. I have had enough of "Indians need to shed Victorian prude nature" by self proclaimed scholars.
 

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What foreigner? He advises a king to be busy with his own enemies who happen to be of same ethnicity and culture. Nowhere he mentions that if Yavanas invade, a king of Kosala should join hands with his enemy king of Kashi or something like that. You should note that ideology based warfare is gift of Abrahmic societies to world along with Chinese. Indians, Romans and Greeks fought for territory and just territory without any regard for religion or culture. When this whole concept was absent, I do not know how anyone could have thought in terms of "forign turks versus we sons of soil who should join hands".
That is exactly why I said we didn't have the aggressive zeal as others have. Our religion, scriptures and way of life teaches us to attend our dharma on our own.
There is no rallying behind prophets and even when dharma yudhha (remote cousin of jihad for some) happens, you'll find only the kshatriyas doing most of the fighting.

I did not say that Rajputs joined hands rather that they showed no concern. Prithviraj did not help Chalukyas in 1176 and was not helped by Jayachandra Gaharwad in turn. It was not that Jayachandra sided with Ghori( as alleged in popular narratives) but that he was happy seeing destruction of Chauhans. The same disease was there in Europe but it had a catholic church which could rally christian forces against jehadis.
Right and the problem is, there are no signs of difference in statecraft, policies and decisions of the natives between dealing with native enemies and dealing with the foreigners
I must add one thing here - though India was not a binding entity politico-militarily. It was still one civilization, one socio-cultural entity. Bit akin to what you call Aryavarta.
They knew they were not dealing with one of the Aryavarta Kingdoms. Yet no special effort was made to psycho-analyze the enemy and his ideology. Result - we were always one step behind and reactive.

Read Rajatarangini of Kalhana( I do possess a hard copy of it) and amount of intrigue, cruelty and licentiousness described by the writer( Kalhana is unanimously regarded as very objective and first hand historian unlike court poets) was initially a mental shock to me. Having grown up, I now see why one hates politics as it is really very dirty animal. The reason we have less accounts of such things from other parts is because we have less records and no historian like Kalhana.
One's view was limited to one's kingdom because of nature of polity. Gaharwala were more threatened by Senas and Chahmans than Ghurids so why would they know about Ghurids as much?
Thats the dommsday thinking. What happened to those who went with that thinking? Polity is not the only thing a King has to learn. There is world beyond Aryavarta. If we move our eyes away from it, it and its dangers don't cease to exist for us. I can somewhat understand for those Kingdoms who weren't sharing borders with Mlechhas but what about the NW Rajput states. They were neighbors of these recurring hordes.

The reason why Lalitaditya could do it was because Kashmir under him was more prosperous than many small Rajput kingdoms and so he had means to do it.
Jaypala Shahi too? What are alliances for, if one doesn't have the required strength on their own. And they did happen. Jaypala did lodge a campaign that got interrupted by severe storm. Were there anymore attempts? No. It doesn't need prosperity to study your enemy and gauge the dangers he poses. It needs foresight, strategic mindset, practical policies and superb logistics. Our rulers dug deep in chivalry were a bit lagging in these areas.
I mentioned Lalitaditya to show how few rulers were actually willing to go deep into enemy territory. Do you really believe that medieval India didn't have anymore of as powerful Kingdoms up in northern half?

The great scholar Andre Wink believes that he developed his cavalry on lines of Sassanids of Iran that is heavy catapharact with man resembling like a metallic robot and horse covered with heavy armour. Not surprisingly, he thrashed most of North Indian kings like that illustrious Yashovraman who did not have such great cavalry. Lalitaditya did enter Xinjiang but please note that Kashmir gained nothing from that as he was entrapped and defeated which led him to burn himself. His compaign was not that succesful and if it was, it was due to his army not that he was more aggressive.
It still takes a ruler to pass the orders for such campaign. I'm, sure we had many strong rulers like Lalitaditya and many phases when our enemy in west was weak.
Sadly nobody never ever thought of taking advantage and ridding themselves of the menace forever. Those few who did, were mired in their own problems so much that they never laid enough emphasize.

Islamic civilization has been based on plunder but the fact that Khorasan and Transoxiana were one of most complex cultures on Earth in eleventh century can not be denied. Muslim mathematicians, doctors and astronomers of that age were far more advanced than anyone else. We were third with Europeans being fourth in scheme of things. Muslims had banks and cheques at that time and wrote about Japan and Chinese cities in detail.
Sorry, cultures based on slave trade and plunder don't appeal as complex and sophisticated to me.
As far as the Math is concerned, they learned it in India. Arabs were the most powerful empire in the world for almost a century. Obviously they would travel and progress in that time. How are they fairing after that spike? What are the intellctual achievements these days? Banning women from driving .. raising fatwas that they shouldn't buy cucumbers because they look like the male organ.
We were not handicapped in the capability of critical strategic thinking. Somewhere a big mistake has been made.

They raped Hindu women, slaughtered hundreds of thousands of poor males but the fact that they had better administrative structure, machines and economy can not be denied. If you wish I can prove my point but it would be like showing how inferior we were so I do not want to go into details.
How does all that prove Indian kingdoms could not have competed with them? And where does administration come from? How many times large were these invaders Kingdoms when they invaded Indian Kingdoms? Weren't they themselves also fighting with each other?
We see so many Arab and other muslim travellers and geographers coming to India, passing off valuable info back home.
How many from India reciprocate?
So how exactly did the Indian Kingdoms manage to be so blissfully unaware of this enemy, despite of being more civilized.

The relevance is for numbers.
Qasim did not have 50,000 soldiers as the Arab cavalry that was sent with him by Hajjaj was just 7,000 and since Arab armies had larger number of cavalry, I doubt he had more than 20,000. That is why I bring in foreign examples. If Arabs attacked such a rich kingdom like Spain with 10,000 soldiers, Sahansahi Iran with 36,000 soldiers( this was struggle for survival by Arabs) and Tang Chinese with just 10,000 soldiers, how could they have raised such a large number for Sindh which could not have been richer than Spain? Dahir collapsed because he did not put up fight at one place rather garrisons after garrisons fought only to be defeated one after another.
Wrong. Qasim's start itself was with 25,000 soldiers, the flower of Khalifa's army, 5 catapults used by the prophet and other heavy machinery. By the time he reached Multan after his initial successes, the size of Qasim's army had increased to 50,000 men (corrobrorated by both the Chachnama and Tuhfatul-Kiram) due to other troops and marauders joining in for plunder and proselytism.

As per Nizamuddin, Mahmud did repent seeing such a vast host of Vidyadhara Chandela but this further proves my point. Vidyadhara also did not have spies, he also waited for him to come, and his reaction also was passive but when Mahmud saw his vast army , he did not gather courage to attack him.
So that is the clue- no spy, no cunningness but vast army could repel Mahmud. Unfortunately,Chandellas broke down after him to much smaller position
You're missing the context. We were comparing whether Indian armies really were so outnumbered against the invaders. Moreover, Mahmud and Vidyadhara did have a short engagement and latter was the one to leave the scene first.
If Mahmud was so scared of Vidyadhara's army, how did he muster courage to return after 3 years and laid seige to the forts of Gwalior and Kalinjar?
It is actually cunningness only and not chivalry that Mahmud didn't meet Vidyadhara head on, the first time.

Empire shrank because richer areas of Khurasan were snatched by Seljuks and ultimately they had to flee to Indus valley thus being denuded of much of resources in terms of raising horses. So, when Yaminis( ghazanavids) lost areas of Khurasan, they did not command as much army and couple this with fact that warriors like Bhoja and Karna Kalachuri emerged, the fact of them being defeated is explained.
Seljuks had started taking Ghaznavid territory even before Mahmud's death. Though I agree on the 'after Seljuks victory' phase, but I was talking about Ghaznavids being pushed back from the Indian side instead.
If even Mahmud (much stronger than his successors) with a much larger army had to repent on seeing one native Kingdom's army, how much would the successors be able to do. Yet they raided Benares and Bahraich and were destroyed again by an federated army.
My original point was on home turf advantage for Indian Kingdoms. I think we're going haywire.

How did Babur become stateless? Mahmud was in similar position but he overcame his uncles and brothers. Anyway, Babur for time being was a king and had Samarkand. It was after that he was defeated by Uzbeks and he fled to lands south of Hindukush. If you think that Babur was successful in Central Asia, you are quite wrong.
No I'm not saying that he was successful in Central Asia, but it takes good Generalship and military qualities to go through so many ups and downs and yet manage to strike gold. Nobody stopped his peers to sweep into India like he did. It should've been easier for them as they had defeated Babur.
As for Babur being state less. I need to check back on that. Remember reading somewhere that his condition was not good when he entered India. Might be I'm mistaken but this much is certain that he was in dire need of strategic depth against his Turkish cousins. That explains why he had to strive for making room in India.

They did not. No contemporary historian mentions this. It is Ferishta who invented this stuff to prove his biased objective of one ghazi equal to 10 kaffirs.
He might have genuinely believed folktales but we have no evidence of such an alliance from contemporary records.
If you want to brush aside Ferishta, that is fine. I know people don't highlight their defeats. But there are other instances of alliances.
However my argument was about how numeric advantage doesn't always work that well, not of proving whether Ferishta was right or not.

So there was no focus on martial aspects in India? If you read Kanhaerdeo Prabhanda, you will find that Rajputs received great training in horsemanship, archery and adroit in sixty four kinds of arms. Every community in Rajasthan be it Rajputs, Jats , Gujjars ,Meenas and even Brahmins was as much martial as any other people.
We're going in circles. What is the percentage Rajputs made in that caste divided population? Did other castes train as good? Did they go out to with hold invasions?
It is a falsity that Jats, Gurjars, Meenas and Brahmins were as militarized as Rajputs. How many of them joined ranks in what numbers at which battles?
These castes were primarily peasents, pastoralists and intellectuals. Seeing a Brahmin Minister with a small regiment of kinsmen once in a while doesn't mean they were as militarized as the kshatriyas.
Jats of Rajputana weren't heavily militarized till the advent of European technology. These caste were otherwise only as militarized and trained as a civilian or a village should for home self defense. It goes against the basic nature of Caste system to have replication of skills across castes.

Ghazanavids issued coins with Indian titles but they were late and did not score anything great against Indians.
It is not about score, but about who can damage whom. Ghaznavids have left permanent marks on the Indian psyche. I need not remind people about what they did here. My objective was to explain how their nomadic lifestyle gave them an instinctive edge, in being successfully aggressive against sedentary agrarians like India.
Reminds me that there's another angle that Indian historical research often overlooks.
It focusses on that final one out of the hundred times an invader invaded a place, doing injustice to the 99 times when they were repulsed by the defending force.

Theoretically yes but practically no. Caste was fluid as Jats who were untouchable Dalits in Sindh and Punjab initially , now they themselves treat chamars as Dalits.
Caste was a very rigid system in medieval India, specially 9th-10th century onwards. yes gradually some castes move up and down at few places. But at one point of time the intercaste outlook still stays rigid.


So numbers are important. right? Sedentary societies could not raise more than 3 percent soldiers who were well trained anywhere and given that kshatriyas were certainly 3 percent, I do not buy caste being responsible for losing battles on part of Hindus.
:wat: And if the caste system wasn't there, or atleast the rigid birth based kind ?? Would the capping of 3 % still be there?
Yes numbers are useful when you can overwhelm a zealot army by 6:1 ratio. They aren't useful when you match enemy man to man and there isn't a considerable edge.

It was not problem of caste but non Abrahmic nature of Hinduism. Why did caste free Rome fall to Christianity?
Rome was decaying in its own way, while India was stagnating. I would not juxtapose Rome here in an Indian discussion.

This is case with Persia, Byzantines and China as well. The fact is that your core army has to win wars not second line of defense.
Holds true for decisive victory and throwing enemy completely out of one's land. But if the first battles are already lost and the land is maruaded by hordes, survival becomes the next objective. That is when de-centralized clan based pocketed resistance plays its role.
That is the reason why I favored neither an overly centralized Imperial nor a post-Harsha age loose colony for India. Both have their own pros and cons. A trade-off striking balance between the two would be ideal.

Explain case of entire area from Spain to Gansu in China. Why they did not lead mass resistance against Islamic storm after their core armies were defeated? Spain was ruled for centuries by Muslims and at one time muslims were very numerous( some one half of population) there and I do not see any " second line of defense" there.
How is that related to my point about India again?

Given our size of states, we had good numbers. Caste system did not capp it as there is no evidence of mass resistance by second line of defense against empires like Slave dynasy or Khiljis anywhere which was fragmented.
There is no mass resistance because of the very reason that society was divided in castes and hence could not be mobilized. Though I've still seen plenty of resistance against Turks or else I would be talking Farsi today. :scared:

All of them can be explained by lack of centralized states and India being backward than Islamic civilization in warfare and many other fields.
Agreed on all except the instinctive cunningness and ruthlessness that comes in nomadic cavalry (specially archers).

Who told you that? Anyway, you said that insularity was there reflected in ideas such as one becomes outcaste if one crosses Aryavarta.
Yes and behaving that way might still not put us to harm from China (Himalayas natural defense) but is criminal neglect doing on western frontier against Arabs, Central Asian hordes etc. Compare the number of travellers and merchants that went out from India to west by land, against the numbers that came in here. Didn't they benefit the enemy by passing off crucial info of geography, routes, passes etc (whether deliberately or in good faith).

Which source includes Tibet and South East Asia as " Aryavarta"? Whether invasions came from there is not point as we are talking about insularity in this case.
:facepalm: hey bhagwaan.
I never said those areas are Aryavarta, but yes they were not explicitly "Mlechha lands" either.
And the point was not whether we had insularity against these regions but instead - whether the insularity against any region made us pay heavy price or not.
We had insularity on western frontier for sure. And we got mauled badly by devils rising out of west. That was my point.

Regards,
Virendra
 

Peter

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@Virendra
Nice post.I learned a lot.However there is one thing that I always wanted to know .As per sources Maharana Pratap lost battle of Haldighati because he had little or no artillery.Despite the fact that artillery and gunpowder were game changers in wars why did our Indian kings not produce enough of them.Even the defeat of the later Indian kingdoms against British could be attributed to that.Also an interesting fact was that India had a lot of saltpetre(a key ingredient of gunpowder).The British in fact used to trade saltpetre and use this valuable resource which was found in India.Surely our kings had the resources then why did they not use it.Even the native American tribes(who initially had no knowledge about horses or gunpowder) used to value rifles more than their ancient bows and arrows.
I mean what was the reason behind our artillery or rifle deficient armies?
 
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Virendra

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@Virendra
Nice post.I learned a lot.However there is one thing that I always wanted to know .As per sources Maharana Pratap lost battle of Haldighati because he had little or no artillery.Despite the fact that artillery and gunpowder were game changers in wars why did our Indian kings not produce enough of them.Even the defeat of the later Indian kingdoms against British could be attributed to that.Also an interesting fact was that India had a lot of saltpetre(a key ingredient of gunpowder).The British in fact used to trade saltpetre and use this valuable resource which was found in India.Surely our kings had the resources then why did they not use it.Even the native American tribes(who initially had no knowledge about horses or gunpowder) used to value rifles more than their ancient bows and arrows.
I mean what was the reason behind our artillery or rifle deficient armies?
As we've been discussing here, India was a much stagnated and rigid place in those times. Value system was different. People weren't paying enough attention to what was happening outside. For the bit they did, their obsolete mindset (of ideas like "crossing Aryavarta makes you outcaste") didn't find such unconventional things very compatible. A stagnant and inertial society doesn't respond well to changing times. It is always behind the curve.

Further, as Pratap has argued, small to middle size Kingdoms weren't as powerful to look into areas like Research & Development, Military Technology etc. They were preoccupied with other struggles.

Lastly, the British and Mughals kept their technology in tight control. It wasn't easily downloadable.
For example - despite of being in alliance with Mughals, Amber rulers had to work very hard for decades to break that firewall of secrecy and obtain Artillery production technology for themselves.
I don't know about native Amercian tribes. Perhaps the threat perception of Indians was different than theirs.

Regards,
Virendra
 
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Bhadra

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This quote of French intellectual is made in different context. He was talking about feudal opression not Victorian or Vedic morals. My point is that morals are restrictive and it is not unique to West. I fully support that society needs them. I have had enough of "Indians need to shed Victorian prude nature" by self proclaimed scholars.
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Jean-Jacques Rousseau was talking about Social Contact and nothing of your Fuedal opression !! But the need to shed some of those Victorian cultural values do exist... World over people have shed those . Why should anglicised Indians remain stuck with that tie cultue...
 

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As we've been discussing here, India was a much stagnated and rigid place in those times. Value system was different. People weren't paying enough attention to what was happening outside. For the bit they did, their obsolete mindset (of ideas like "crossing Aryavarta makes you outcaste") didn't find such unconventional things very compatible. A stagnant and inertial society doesn't respond well to changing times. It is always behind the curve.

Further, as Pratap has argued, small to middle size Kingdoms weren't as powerful to look into areas like Research & Development, Military Technology etc. They were preoccupied with other struggles.

Lastly, the British and Mughals kept their technology in tight control. It wasn't easily downloadable.
For example - despite of being in alliance with Mughals, Amber rulers had to work very hard for decades to break that firewall of secrecy and obtain Artillery production technology for themselves.
I don't know about native Amercian tribes. Perhaps the threat perception of Indians was different than theirs.

Regards,
Virendra
When mentioning that Peter perhaps had in mind inovations like Tipu Sultan did..... after all he made use of primitive rocket technology..
@Peter

Even today the insugents and Guerillas do not use Artillary. It does not mean they do not win or inflict sufficient damdge.

A weapon system is required to support a tactical method or a strategy. In that context it was perhaps wrong for Rana to come to a bttle in plains and flat piece of ground.

The type of terrain and tactics adopted by Pratap did not have much use for artillary. Yes, if he had those he could have used those for the battle of Haldighati. What were the resorces of the poorest of Rajputana state? Though he could employee foreign military trainers, buying pieces of French artillary would cost Udaipur very dear.

The Moguls were not initially able to take up even one Gun up the slopes of Chittorgarh then they had to pay one golden coin every day to every one to hual up one gun which is stuck up there only.

What do you think were the ranges of guns during that period ??

Have you seen Kumbalgarh ? See some photos then you would understand...


However, your point is valid.

Sheer bravery and sense of sacrifce can not always make up for the deficiencies of superior technology and suprerior tactics.... which has been the case with most of the Indian states.
 
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Pratap

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Jean-Jacques Rousseau was talking about Social Contact and nothing of your Fuedal opression !! But the need to shed some of those Victorian cultural values do exist... World over people have shed those . Why should anglicised Indians remain stuck with that tie cultue...
Social contract is different from social "contact". Rousseau is not point of discussion here but his quote was made in context of feudal oppression not in terms of sexual morality.
 

Pratap

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@Virendra

Agreed on all except the instinctive cunningness and ruthlessness that comes in nomadic cavalry (specially archers).
Please let us agree to disagree. I have already said that once one enters politics, one becomes cunning and ruthless enough. Read Rajatarangini and then tell me how likes of Didda or Harsha( not Harshavardhana of Thaneswar) were any less cunning than likes of Ghazanavi or Ghori?
 
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Social contract is different from social "contact". Rousseau is not point of discussion here but his quote was made in context of feudal oppression not in terms of sexual morality.
Spell mistake agreed but not the context.... it will take time for you to understand theory of " Social Contract"...
 

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European gunners were far more quicker and accurate in using the same artillery, as compared to Indians or Central Asians.
Because it was Europe that was pioneer of gunpowder warfare even if idea was invented by Chinese.
 

Peter

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As we've been discussing here, India was a much stagnated and rigid place in those times. Value system was different. People weren't paying enough attention to what was happening outside. For the bit they did, their obsolete mindset (of ideas like "crossing Aryavarta makes you outcaste") didn't find such unconventional things very compatible. A stagnant and inertial society doesn't respond well to changing times. It is always behind the curve.

Further, as Pratap has argued, small to middle size Kingdoms weren't as powerful to look into areas like Research & Development, Military Technology etc. They were preoccupied with other struggles.

Lastly, the British and Mughals kept their technology in tight control. It wasn't easily downloadable.
For example - despite of being in alliance with Mughals, Amber rulers had to work very hard for decades to break that firewall of secrecy and obtain Artillery production technology for themselves.
I don't know about native Amercian tribes. Perhaps the threat perception of Indians was different than theirs.

Regards,
Virendra
Yes your points are correct.If Indian kings had used even 10% more gunpowder units in their armies I am sure it would have formed a much more deadlier force.We had brave men but just could not arm them.However you have said it quite rightly that as India had small kingdoms,kings like Maharana Pratap could not buy or produce gunpowder weapons.
 

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Because it was Europe that was pioneer of gunpowder warfare even if idea was invented by Chinese.
Quite OT, but was it not the Ottoman Turks who really pioneered gunpowder warfare.
 

Peter

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No, what makes you think so? Europeans were always at the forefront of inventing new ways to kill
Well the ottomans were one of the first to use gunpowder technology.Even in India,the Vijayanagar Empire used primitive gunpowder weapons circa 1366 AD.Of course they did not form a core component of their armies.What is sad that even a rich and powerful empire like Vijaynagar did not utilise gunpowder weapons properly.

https://indiagunhistory.wordpress.com/tag/vijayanagara-empire/
 

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Quite OT, but was it not the Ottoman Turks who really pioneered gunpowder warfare.
Wrong. Ottomans had larger empire than any European kingdom ( apart from France till 16th century) so it might be possible that they had more guns and casted largest cannons, yet the fact remains that they depended upon Hungarian engineers to develop these guns and by the time Mughals appear in Indian history, Europeans had best navies because of their great use of gunpowder. However, I agree that among non whites, Ottomans had quite good armoury.
 

Pratap

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No, what makes you think so? Europeans were always at the forefront of inventing new ways to kill
Only from 14th century and since then they have been at forefront of developing everything. Europeans developed ideas of racism, they developed anti racism, Europeans developed concept of human rights, they produced Nazis and communists. Our world as it exists now is creation of Europeans.
 

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