Maharana Pratap of Mewar

[Pratap]

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/

Because we do not have any account on mechanical capability of Vijaynagar so we can not be sad about them.

Battle of Crecy was first major scene where cannons were used much before Ottomans.

 

[Peter]

Because we do not have any account on mechanical capability of Vijaynagar so we can not be sad about them.

Battle of Crecy was first major scene where cannons were used much before Ottomans.

Well no Crecy was a battle where cannons were first used in European warfare.The turks,chinese had used hand cannons long before that(well not exactly like modern cannons )

 

[Pratap]

@Virendra

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.

I do not think that I am wrong. Chachnama is available online and nowhere it mentions about 25,000 soldiers from Khalifa's core. It mentions 6,000 cavalry from Syria and Iraq and other 6000 camel riders . Professor KS Lal believes figure is somewhere around 20,000 and irregulars were recruited from Makran not from Arabia.

Also, how come catapult was used by Prophet? I have read every battle in which he participated, most were fought on open battlefields and at one place you would be surprised to know that ordinary boundary walls some 9 feet high protected Arab polytheists from Muslims until a Muslim jumped and opened the door of wall for protecting datepalms. The first use of catapults by Muslims was after 634 and Prophet died by 632.
The author of Chachnama is bluffing if he says that catapult was used by prophet.

 

[Pratap]

Well no Crecy was a battle where cannons were first used in European warfare.The turks,chinese had used hand cannons long before that(well not exactly like modern cannons )

Major scene guy.
Tubes discharging gunpowder are invention of Chinese but cannons were used by Europeans. Turks came later than both.

 

[Peter]

Major scene guy.
Tubes discharging gunpowder are invention of Chinese but cannons were used by Europeans. Turks came later than both.

Check out the cannon wiki,Its clearly mentioned they were invented and used by the Chinese.Then they spread to the Islamic world and then Europe.The turks did use great bombards which were designed by an european.However I think they made use of inferior cannons before that,
Cannon - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[Pratap]

Check out the cannon wiki,Its clearly mentioned they were invented and used by the Chinese.Then they spread to the Islamic world and then Europe.
Cannon - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Invention is another matter. Tubes discharging gunpowder are also cannons, the fact is that we have no definite account of cannons employed like at Crecy among Chinese. Chinese invented it, it spread by Mongols and Europeans used it in better manner than Chinese and by 16th century Chinese had to learn it from Portuguese.

 

[Peter]

Invention is another matter. Tubes discharging gunpowder are also cannons, the fact is that we have no definite account of cannons employed like at Crecy among Chinese. Chinese invented it, it spread by Mongols and Europeans used it in better manner than Chinese and by 16th century Chinese had to learn it from Portuguese.

Yes you are right about the fact that Europeans perfected the art of cannons which was developed by Asians.Well while searching the net I came across a term gunpowder empire.The Ottomans,Mughals and Safavids were gunpowder empires.Very few nations(even european ones) could resist these empires.No wonder our hero Maharana Pratap could not win against the Mughals. If Maharana Pratap had guns,Akbar would probably have lost.
Gunpowder Empires - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[Peter]

Mod: Purged

Mate,lets not bring OIT and AIT into Rana Pratap thread.

 

[Pratap]

Yes you are right about the fact that Europeans perfected the art of cannons which was developed by Asians.Well while searching the net I came across a term gunpowder empire.The Ottomans,Mughals and Safavids were gunpowder empires.Very few nations(even european ones) could resist these empires.No wonder our hero Maharana Pratap could not win against the Mughals. If Maharana Pratap had guns,Akbar would probably have lost.
Gunpowder Empires - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Agreed except that Europeans did win against Ottomans. Spain defeated Ottomans in naval battle.

 

[PredictablyMalicious]

Yes you are right about the fact that Europeans perfected the art of cannons which was developed by Asians.Well while searching the net I came across a term gunpowder empire.The Ottomans,Mughals and Safavids were gunpowder empires.Very few nations(even european ones) could resist these empires.No wonder our hero Maharana Pratap could not win against the Mughals. If Maharana Pratap had guns,Akbar would probably have lost.
Gunpowder Empires - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ottomans lost most of their battles against the Russians. Imperialist Russia was a juggernaut like no other and defeated well established empires with high success rate. Have you ever wondered how Russia came to be so big?

 

[Pratap]

Ottomans lost most of their battles against the Russians. Imperialist Russia was a juggernaut like no other and defeated well established empires with high success rate. Have you ever wondered how Russia came to be so big?

Only since our friend Peter took throne. Russia snatched some areas in black sea from Ottomans but its major gains were made at cost of native siberians( whom they massacred relentlesssly) and Safavids. Azerbaijan would have been part of Iran but for Russians. Nadir saved Iran from further Russian encroachments.Russians are good at nothing except throwing large number of civilians like they did with Napolean and Hitler. On its own , Russian army has very few victories. Muslims being 12 percent and living there since centuries says a lot about all this.

 

[Pratap]

@Virendra

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.

Agreed completely except only kshatriya part.

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

That is what I have been saying and it is a problem of ideology not of shortsightedness on part of individual rulers. Entire society is to be blamed( perhaps not as pagan society can not comprehend Abrahmic threat in pre modern age) for this.

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.

But political fragmentation nullified vastness of this civilization. Women of Peshawar were as ready to burn than lose honour as Rajasthan but because these two areas were not united, individual resistance was overcome easily by bearded ghazis.

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.

Correct. As I said, Europe had same disease but had a centre in form of papacy, we did not have. Even Europe did not act as one in face of Mongol invasions.

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.

In medieval age, people were not aware of areas outside their own civilization. The neighbours of recurring hordes treated them as hordes not as an enemy inspired by similar ideology and with objective of destruction of all of them just because they were Hindus. Jayachandra never thought that Ghuri would attack him as soon as he vanquished Chauhans for he thought in terms of normal diplomacy and was not aware of jehad concept. Also, conquering forces have never been stopped by sudden alliances.

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.

What is distance between Peshawar and Kabul? I suppose 200 miles some 5-6 times less than Ghazanavid march from Ghazni to Somnath. Please note that Ghazanavi did this when he had looted entire Pakistan and UP so it is reasonable to argue that he could finance such a long march easily.
Llalitaditya had immense resources by looting North India and could afford to lose his mercenaries. Calculate cost of feeding 50,000 people for months and then you would get what I am saying. Our rulers did not have superb logistics for want of resources . Why you do not see Senas launching raid into South East Asia like Cholas? Senas were smaller is the answer not that he missed chances for want of aggressiveness.

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?

Not with great resources. Feudal and clannish based kingdoms suffer from paucity of central revenue so they can not undertake long and aggressive compaigns unless united by alliances.

Sorry, cultures based on slave trade and plunder don't appeal as complex and sophisticated to me.

I am myself moralistic and I hate them but I meant that materially they were quite sophisticated.

As far as the Math is concerned, they learned it in India.

Yeah, but they progressed further than us and in geometry and map making were better than both Europeans and Indians. Muslim astronomy was also quite advanced.

. 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?

Interestingly, Arabs ( arabized persians, maghrebis and spanish) became advanced only after Khalifa Harun Rashid and after him empire was no more.
When they were most powerful empire( I doubt that as Tangs had larger manpower and resources), they were quite backward.

What are the intellctual achievements these days?

That is like saying that Bihar was not advanced than Malaysia in Gupta age because it is now quite poor. I talked about history not said that they have some inherent superiority over us.

Banning women from driving .. raising fatwas that they shouldn't buy cucumbers because they look like the male organ.

I thought ban was for brinjal and Banana Anyway, such things have not prevented Iran from developing indigenous aircrafts unlike liberal Phillipines.
Social backwardness has not much to do with intellectual backwardness. Harshavardhana's age India was much superior to England or Arabia, despite harsha's mother burning herself and no one stopping it( Mind you it was an ordinary Sati event not any act to protect honour).

We were not handicapped in the capability of critical strategic thinking. Somewhere a big mistake has been made.

Big mistake is neglect of farmers, oppressing them and not doing much on ideological fronts. Chinese took 10 percent of produce, we took anywhere between 16 to 30 percent from farmers. Mughals took 50 percent sometimes.

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.

Because you can overcome horse archers only by outnumbering them and you can not do it if you have loose feudal structure. Ghurids had a centralized rule over entire Pak and Afghanistan. What was extent of Prithviraj and was his empire centralized? Did he have central revenue to have a standing army of 60,000?

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.

Are you serious here? So just because Kushanas entered India and not Xiongnu ( who crushed kushans in their own homeland), Xiongnu becomes weak? Babur could not hold his own against his rivals so he sought fortune here. Simple as that.

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.

I agree about numeric advantage part but I would appreciate if you can throw some light on alliances.

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?

Rajputs must have been around 5 percent on average( certainly 3 percent ). Other castes did not train as good as Rajputs but my point was that they were as much martial as other communities( non soldier) of sedentary world.

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.

Brother, please read my line . I said that these communities were as militarized as any other community in world. Now, we can exclude nomadic societies so what I meant was that a Rajput was as martial as a Chinese soldier, a Brahmin as martial as chinese intellectual and so on. I did not mean that they all were equal among themselves. I challenged notion of hindu cowardice or hindus lacking manhood by this example.

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.

Horse archery and heavy cavalry had more to do with this success but you are right horse archery is itself a nomadic art.

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.

Not at all. Gujarati forces intercepted a small contingent of Ghazanavi army and captured some women of Turks. The solankis took them all as wives with women of low rank being married to common soldiers and some noble women( in case they were "kumaris") were married by nobles . So a people marrying beef eating musalmanins can not be called as rigid at any cost.

And if the caste system wasn't there, or atleast the rigid birth based kind ?? Would the capping of 3 % still be there?

Yes. We have host of examples from places outside India.

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.

Agreed.

Rome was decaying in its own way, while India was stagnating. I would not juxtapose Rome here in an Indian discussion.

The point I made was that caste free pagan societies have also fallen to Abrahmic ones so I do not hold caste responsible for our defeats.

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.

But if you are centralized, you will always have option to spread yourself. I repeat that centralization does not mean no resistance at local levels, only that it has huge potential to mobilize army at one place .

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.

OK I once again agree.

How is that related to my point about India again?

World is not Aryavarta my brother. You can not keep out losses of entire world from Xinjiang to Spain and at the same time holding caste responsible for no resistance. If caste was responsible, what about Iraq, Syria and Spain? Why they did not throw invaders out? You will have to address this point.

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.

No because mass resistance can not come from defunct kingdoms which were loose and feudal with being small.

We do not speak Farsi because we had strong agrarian patriarchal culture. Varanasi was ruled for 5 centuries less than Dhaka which had hindu kings at times, yet in 1900 , my district had only one eighth as Muslims unlike Dhaka where they were two thirds.

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)

Hindus could not travel westwards because of Islam. Nikitin had to covert to come to India, do you think that Hindus would have eaten beef to travel these lands. My point is that Muslims did not allow hindus to travel to lands beyond Hindukush and not that insularity reflected in brahmanic texts stopped people.
SE Asia and Tibet were not dominated by Muslims so we travelled in these areas.

hey bhagwaan.

Kanhe Bhaiyya? Did I make some stupid statement?

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.

We did not have insularity, it was forced on us by Muslims.

 

[Pratap]

Post deleted.

 

[Pratap]

@Virendra

A man asked a question on India being ruled by Turks and a chinese guy with quite good knowledge of history said this.

Its strange this question is only asked about India, when the Arab world (middle east) and Persia were ruled by Turkic peoples for as long as India.

The Turkic Central Asian nomads managed to conquer the middle east, the Ghaznavids began in 962 when they conquered Iran and Afghanistan and made raids into India. Then the Seljuq Turkic nomads started in 1036, took over the entire Iran and built an empire through the Arab world in the Levant and conquered Anatolia.

The Mamelukes who ruled Egypt were Turkic nomads and Circassians. Turkic Principalities and states like the Zengids and Seljuk Sultanate of Rum continued to rule over the Middle East and then the rise of the Ottomans occured, with the Ottoman Turks seizing control of nearly the entire Arab world all the way to Algeria in the west and Yemen in the south.

Timur was also a Turkic nomad. After he attacked India, he terrorized the Iranian plateau and the Middle East, slaughtering tens of thousands of Persians in Isfahan and other cities, and he slaughtered tens of thousands of Arabs in Damascus and Aleppo as he laid waste to the region. He intended to built another massive empire from central asia.

Next, the Safavids, Nader Shah, and the Qajars, all of whom were Turkic, ruled over Iran until the 1920s.

India, being ruled by the Turkic Delhi Sultanates and Mughals, was one of many subjugated peoples (including west eurasian Arabs and Persians) under nomadic Turkic rule. Nothing unique about the Mughals and India, why not ask if Arabs consider the Turkic Zengids, Ottomans, or Mamelukes as indigenous, or if the Persians consider the Turkic Qajars as native?

If you actually counted, Arabs and Persians have been under continuous nomadic Turkic rule longer than India, since the Ghaznavids started in 962 and Seljuqs in 1036, but the Ottomans and Qajars were only toppled in the 1920s.

The only big civilization to escape this nearly 1,000 year stretch of continuous Turkic nomadic rule was China. While your so called powerful west eurasian civilizations were under Turkic nomadic subjugation.

The point is that other societies in Mid East were ruled by these Turks much more than we Indians. Nothing unique about our defeats.

 

[Pratap]

@Virendra
I did not want to go into Islamic versus Hindu civilization but just see this

This is a gold coin of Iranian dynasty of Samanids


Now see this coin of Pratiharas who were contemporary to Samanids

I hope you can see the difference.

 

[Simple_Guy]

Gujarati forces intercepted a small contingent of Ghazanavi army and captured some women of Turks. The solankis took them all as wives with women of low rank being married to common soldiers and some noble women( in case they were "kumaris") were married by nobles .

Where is this factoid from?

 

[TrueSpirit1]

Mughal ruled india from 12th to 16th century , Hindu Marathas Destroyed Mughal Empire in 16-17th Century. British Destroyed Marathas and other Hindu Powers then Gandhi Destroyed British

Dates are all messed up. Everything quoted above is incorrect.

 

[Virendra]

@Virendra
A man asked a question on India being ruled by Turks and a chinese guy with quite good knowledge of history said this.
The point is that other societies in Mid East were ruled by these Turks much more than we Indians. Nothing unique about our defeats.

I'm not being overly harsh on our ancestors. I was only trying to highlight what were the weaknesses.
I do believe that from where they were standing, they did try very well and save us lot considerably. But if not for introspection, then we have no use of history.

 

[Pratap]

I'm not being overly harsh on our ancestors. I was only trying to highlight what were the weaknesses.
I do believe that from where they were standing, they did try very well and save us lot considerably. But if not for introspection, then we have no use of history.

We are certainly introspecting but our conclusions are differing a bit. You are emphasizing more on caste or lack of ruthlessness, I on decentralization and economic stagnation.

 

[Peter]

Here a few pics of Maharana Pratap which I think are relevant on this thread.