Indian battle formations and weapons

[Mystic Ninja]

Hi,

Here is some info from wikipedia that tell you of some weapons and battle formation used by ancient indian armies. Its taken from the ancient indian tale of the mahabarata and predates the Pandyas

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurukshetra_war

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_history_of_India

[Nero666]

Nice info Ninja. Maybe we can use some of it. A battle with 4 million people in it? That's huge!

[Mystic Ninja]

Nice info Ninja. Maybe we can use some of it. A battle with 4 million people in it? That's huge!

4 million does sound mental! May be a slight exageration by the scribes of that time.

[rez]

Sorry i didnt thank you sooner, ive been in the midst of exams.

thanks for the info, we will be investigating that epic

[Arjun]

Sorry i didnt thank you sooner, ive been in the midst of exams.

thanks for the info, we will be investigating that epic

its the largest epic in the world! 7times the size of the Illiad and the Odessy put together

[Stalins Ghost]

One thing- the articles say the battle occured in 3000BCE...more than a little before RoP's timeframe :S

[Zenith Darksea]

There is no way that any battle could have had four million people in it. You couldn't feed an army of more than about half a million (and that's really stretching it), you couldn't command such big armies effectively, and you couldn't fit that many men on a battlefield!

[removeduser_426582376423734]

Note that the army was not in co-ordination, there were hundreds and thousands of warlords that had their own men, and only allied to one side or the other. These were not men who fought prolonged campaigns. This war took only a few weeks.

[rez]

And the likelyhood of that many troops eligible for service in 3000 BC is just as ridiculous.

However the dating of the epic goes its the weapons and strategies i will be looking at.

Strategy and weapons form a good tradition that we can theorise on. Besides this epic is one of the few primary sources available

[Zenith Darksea]

Even so, that's really stretching it. Four million men? Even if they were separate warlords, that's not feasible. There wouldn't be enough forage, for a start.

Let's assume that each warlord can muster ten thousand men, and that each of the two sides is equal. Each side would require the mobilisation of two hundred warlords. That would take a very, very long time indeed! It would require months and months to mobilise them all and set an assembly point.

And even assuming that they all got to the battlefield, where would all the men go? About 90% of them would just be wandering about at the back.

[The Fish]

Of course, it is very difficult to use an epic that's thousands of years old and has had a great deal of oral history associated with it as a concrete historical document; to do so would be to miss the entire point of the Mahabharata. 4 million men surely stretches credulity, but that number is contingent on a number of things that could have been distorted over time. Setting aside exaggeration on the part of Vyasa (the composer of the epic), the person who wrote that Wikipedia article based his number on an interpretation of the "akshauhini," a numerical and logistical measure of armed men (in the same vein as a division or a battalion in a modern army). How he got those particular numbers is not clear, so it's definitely possible his numbers are off by an order of magnitude.

The more salient point, though, is that it is clear that ancient India (and we mean really ancient, here), had a highly advanced and organized war-fighting and logistical system in place a long time ago. Whether or not 4 million men literally took part in the battle is less relevant than the fact that the concepts of advanced formations and organizations of troops were in place (a fact I know to be a part of the epic, based on my personal readings of it). Note also that the India of antiquity had some of the biggest population centers in the world, so that the many individual kings and warlords who came together to fight this war could surely have fielded very large armies.

Finally, regarding the land area involved in the war and its ability to sustain large numbers of troops, I think we have to realize here that Kurukshetra is a very large area. We tend to think of specific battlefields as occupying relatively small areas (e.g. a field or a hill) where the two sides clash. Kurukshetra is around 1200 sq. km, meaning it would be analagous to saying, the battle took place in Pennsylvania (well, maybe not that big...Rhode Island?). This means that it is entirely possible that different phases of the war took place in areas that were not necessarily geographically adjacent to each other. This is somewhat supported by events detailed in the war. For instance, when the Pandavas are faced with a particularly formidable Kaurava battle formation (the Chakra Vyuha, to be specific), they need Arjuna, their greatest warrior and tactician, to crack it. He is, however, described as being too far away, fighting in another part of the battle, to do it, so his son Abhimanyu tries, and is killed in the process. This event seems to imply that the war was indeed spread out over a very large area, which further lends credence to the armies being VERY large.

[Mystic Ninja]

Hi,

The point of me adding those links was to show that Indian armies of that time were just as sophisticated and organised as Persian and Greek armies. I just dont want Indians to be treated as some half naked barbarian faction.

[Zenith Darksea]

Don't worry, there's no chance of that happening. We're not CA.

[Mystic Ninja]

I'm sure you guys have checked out the mod just above yours Res Gestate or something. That modders Mauriyan faction is very impressive, may be you should join forces!

I'm a bit disapointed with CA about their Alexander expansion. The thought of Naked Indian women warriors makes me cringe! Based on what i've seen CA have made the Indian faction look like a barbarian faction!

[FliegerAD]

Prometheus is a fine modeller, but his mod is covering an entirely different timeframe. I really need to stress that our timeframe is mid 6th cent. to early 5th cent.BC. We need info specifically for that era.
Sources covering an other timeframe are not good, especially, if it is no historiography, but an epic.

Fish, do you have info about the Indians of our time (or at least, close to it)?

[removeduser_426582376423734]

Well, the long post he made outlined the Mahabharata, fought at Kurukshetra. One of the earliest known Indian battles to be scripted.

[Mystic Ninja]

Prometheus is a fine modeller, but his mod is covering an entirely different timeframe. I really need to stress that our timeframe is mid 6th cent. to early 5th cent.BC. We need info specifically for that era.
Sources covering an other timeframe are not good, especially, if it is no historiography, but an epic.

Fish, do you have info about the Indians of our time (or at least, close to it)?

The Mahabarata predates the time frame of this mod. The point of me posting was to show that Indian armies were just advanced as Persian and Greek. Indian armies should have improved greatly from the Mahabarta times (vedic period) to the Pandyan period of the mod.

[FliegerAD]

The Mahabarata predates the time frame of this mod. The point of me posting was to show that Indian armies were just advanced as Persian and Greek.

As ZD said, we are trying to make them as accurate as possible, but we need proper sources therefore. I don't think an epic predating our timeframe by thousands of years is the best source.
As I said, if anyone has info about the Indians of our time, we gladly accept them.

btw, Greek armies were far behind the oriental armies (Persian or Babylonian e.g.) in terms of professionalism, organisation and tactics at our time. Actually, Greek military was rather simple without much tactics or organisation.
So I am not sure, what you are going to say, when you compare the Indian armies to the Greek and Persian militaries.

[The Fish]

Unfortunately, I'm not a historian, and finding adequate sources about the specifics of Indian militaries at this time is incredibly hard. The closest I've been able to find is some info on Wikipedia about the Gupta Empire, which is somewhat later than the time period of this mod (around the 3rd-4th century CE). However, I think it gives a good impression of the mixing of military technologies that occurred, primarily between the Persians and Indians, while highlighting some aspects of Indian military technology and organization that seems to have persisted from the time of the Mahabharata all the way to medieval times:
1) the supremacy of archery: Archery has always been the most venerated martial form in India; all the great heroes of the epics were great archers, and this seems to reflect how important the bow was to the military makeup of Indian armies. Indian bows were excellent, and I recall reading at one point (although I can't find the source now, unfortunately), a hypothesis that iron-shafted arrows fired from metal bows could pierce straight through the shields and armor of the Macedonian/Selucid hoplites, which contributed greatly to the number of casualties suffered by Alexander and later Hellenistic generals (this despite the fact that they usually outnumbered the small Indian chieftains they faced in battle).
2. Elephants: no need to really elaborate on this. They have been used for millenia to great effect in India, and are already an integral part of the mod, as I recall.
3. Chariots: important back in the day, probably very much less important by the time of this mod; probably only used by generals and kings as a status symbol. Cavalry was probably much more in vogue, although it seems that Infantry/archers and elephants were the main focus of Indian military strategy, with horses somewhat less important

Anyway, here's an excerpt from the Wiki about the Guptas (again, somewhat later than this mod, but the best I could find):

The Imperial Guptas could not have achieved their successes through force of arms without an efficient martial system. Historically, the best accounts of this comes not from the Hindus themselves but from Chinese and Western observers. However, a contemporary Indian document, regarded as a military classic of the time, the Siva-Dhanur-veda, offers some insight into the military system of the Guptas. Like Indian kings before them, and centuries afterwards, the Guptas would have utilized war elephants. These thick hided beasts, supplemented by additional armour and the soldiers that they carried, would have provided a powerful offensive and psychological weapon against an unprepared foe. Another advantage was that they could cause the horses of enemy cavalry to panic from their scent, as the Macedonians discovered. However, their use carried the grave risk of the elephants panicking and stampeding, which more clever opponents used to their advantage.

The use of chariots had heavily declined by the time of the Guptas, having already proved their uselessness against the Macedonians, Scythians, and other invaders. In response, the Guptas seemed to have utilized heavy cavalry clad in mail armour and equipped with maces and lances, who would have used shock action to break the enemy line, much like the clibanarii of the Sassanid Persians and Byzantines in the same era. It is unclear whether they were used to the extent of elephants.

The Guptas seem to have relied heavily on infantry archers, and the bow was one of the dominant weapons of their army. The Hindu version of the longbow was composed of metal, or more typically bamboo, and fired a long bamboo cane arrow with a metal head. Unlike the composite bows of Western and Central Asian foes, bows of this design would be less prone to warping in the damp and moist conditions often prevalent to the region. Iron shafts were used against armored elephants, and fire arrows were also part of the bowmen's arsenal. Archers were frequently protected by infantry equipped with shields, javelins, and longswords.

The Guptas also had knowledge of siegecraft, catapults, and other sophisticated war machines.

The Guptas apparently showed little predilection for using horse archers, despite the fact these warriors were a main component in the ranks of their Scythian, Parthian, and Hepthalite (Huna) enemies. However, the Gupta armies were probably better disciplined. Able commanders like Samudragupta and Chandragupta II would have likely understood the need for combined armed tactics and proper logistical organization. Gupta military success likely stemmed from the concerted use elephants, armored cavalry, and foot archers in tandem against both Hindu kingdoms and foreign armies invading from the Northwest. Guptas also maintained a navy, allowing them to control regional waters.

Finally, just to illustrate how far the Indians of the time period of the mod were from military neophytes, I thought I'd include a scholarly article detailing the "Arthashastra" of Kautilya, a guy who makes Machiavelli look like a pansy. It doesn't really include any details on particular military structure, but rather is an outline of overall tactics (military, political, and in foreign relations). Might be good if you want to add those quotations they have on the loading screens?
http://muse.jhu.edu/demo/journal_of_...7.1boesche.pdf

Sorry about the long post (again).

[rez]

By all means continue posting my fishy compatriot, your posts are of excellent quality and do a lot in helping us understand what we are dealing with when developing the Indians.

We have understood the well developed nature of India and our current unit rosters do reflect the information you just posted. However, appearances, armour and variation for a second Indian faction are three major concerns of mine amongst others.

The lack of good information leaves a lot of historical speculation - But the RoP team has gotten quite used to that and we seem to come out on top with our research.

My theories on how to work with India stem from looking at units and their weapons throughout the surrounding timeframe. Since we dont have info on our specific period we can look at what came before and after. Through this we can see the martial traditions of the Indian culture and approximate a logical reconstruction.

Whilst vague for now i assure you we will be giving the Indians just as much attention as EVERY other faction in the mod.

- Rez