Why were indigenous Indian empires so weak after 1100 AD ?

[Raghav_12]

There was nobody to think of United India from local emperors and dynasties. The whole concept of ruling a complete india was missing from all kingdoms of India. Other than Marathas of 18th century none of rulers even tried to control whole country. That's why I have always been in awe of Maratha emperors (Peshwas) and read a lot about them out of interest.

[randomGuy]

He was ruthless initially

are you talking abt ruthless in expanding his empire or abt ruthless in the way he treated his subjects? Ashoka was ruthless in expanding his empire (war of Kalinga), but not so towards the people in his empire. I had the impression that Aurangzeb was particularly bad in how he treated people in his empire (persecution, forced conversions etc) which is what gave rise to Sikhism and then the demise of Mughals.

[Tiger80]

baburs suceess was determined by cannons. He was the first to bring cannons to India and Indians had no answer to them. As it happens, cannons scare the shyte out of the elephants, something the Indians could not have predicted or deal with. Hemu lost to Akbar/Bairam Khan because of a freak shot to the eye. See, Indians were feudal back then. Once the lord is dead, its over. It wasnt a fight for the nation/kingdom/country, it was a fight for hemu.

What I don't understand why Indian kings keep repeating same mistake. Dahir was winning the war when he fell down from elephant..Prithviraj was captured/killed and Hemu too . Why these kings were on forefront of war making enemies easier to target them

[Vilander]

1, India is a continent not a country. Look at Europe. A nation with 20-80 million people and 50 -300k sq km is a country, similar demographic unit in India is a state. European countries have 1 lingustic background indian states have one linguistic background. 2, Indian nations were small and could not defend themselves by themselves, after the Brits left they stayed unified because otherwise they would have been over run by mullas and Chinese the way Kashmir and Tibet were. So its really a case were adverse security conditions lead into a strong unified super nation hood over several nationalities.

[coffee_rules]

are you talking abt ruthless in expanding his empire or abt ruthless in the way he treated his subjects? Ashoka was ruthless in expanding his empire (war of Kalinga), but not so towards the people in his empire. I had the impression that Aurangzeb was particularly bad in how he treated people in his empire (persecution, forced conversions etc) which is what gave rise to Sikhism and then the demise of Mughals.

The OP was talking about Muslim barbarians who came about 400 years before Akbar.Reg Akbar what we read is not what it is. We think of Akbar characterised from the tale of Jodha Akhar which is a fictional story.

[Muloghonto]

What I don't understand why Indian kings keep repeating same mistake. Dahir was winning the war when he fell down from elephant..Prithviraj was captured/killed and Hemu too . Why these kings were on forefront of war making enemies easier to target them

Because there were only two empires in the history of India where the king did not show up to the battle but instead, sent their trusted generals : The medeival Chola Empire and the Magadh empire, from 550s BC to 50 BC or so ( I call it the Magadh empire because all the Haranyakas, Shishunagas, Nandas, Mauryas, Shungas and Kanvas were different dynasties ruling Magadh pretty much uninterrupted for those 500 years and most of greater India). Everyone else almost always were themselves at the battle- including the Guptas, Palas, Gujjars, Harsha- all of them. This is because the concept of 'desh/nation' was only around in the Magadh empire, that too from 400 BCE or so till the end. When you fight for your nation, a general who is competent, is enough to inspire his troops. But from the Kushan era onwards ( 1 AD or so), India entered the feudal stage: where you didn't fight for anyone but your leige lord/master/thakur etc. The wars between Pals and Pratihars were not wars between two nations, it was wars between two kings. So how could a king ask you to fight for him but not show up to the fight himself ? This is why we see in feudal history- both Indian, Japanese and European- the king/emperor was always present in the battlefield because we were fighting for him, not our nation. Ergo, if i am the king and you lot are fighting for me,well i can't just sit back behind my army and hide- i have to fight too, right ? This is why Indian kings often fought at the frontlines and against enemies from out of India, who were generally far more ruthless in warfare, sometimes the king was killed pretty easily.

[Tiger80]

Because there were only two empires in the history of India where the king did not show up to the battle but instead, sent their trusted generals : The medeival Chola Empire and the Magadh empire, from 550s BC to 50 BC or so ( I call it the Magadh empire because all the Haranyakas, Shishunagas, Nandas, Mauryas, Shungas and Kanvas were different dynasties ruling Magadh pretty much uninterrupted for those 500 years and most of greater India). Everyone else almost always were themselves at the battle- including the Guptas, Palas, Gujjars, Harsha- all of them. This is because the concept of 'desh/nation' was only around in the Magadh empire, that too from 400 BCE or so till the end. When you fight for your nation, a general who is competent, is enough to inspire his troops. But from the Kushan era onwards ( 1 AD or so), India entered the feudal stage: where you didn't fight for anyone but your leige lord/master/thakur etc. The wars between Pals and Pratihars were not wars between two nations, it was wars between two kings. So how could a king ask you to fight for him but not show up to the fight himself ? This is why we see in feudal history- both Indian, Japanese and European- the king/emperor was always present in the battlefield because we were fighting for him, not our nation. Ergo, if i am the king and you lot are fighting for me,well i can't just sit back behind my army and hide- i have to fight too, right ? This is why Indian kings often fought at the frontlines and against enemies from out of India, who were generally far more ruthless in warfare, sometimes the king was killed pretty easily.

Not saying that kings shouldn't go to battlefield , but why to expose yourself on frontline?

[Muloghonto]

Not saying that kings shouldn't go to battlefield ' date=' but why to expose yourself on frontline?[/quote'] Ok. Lets pretend I am a king/emperor in medeival India. Why do i get to be the king ? Because I am the best, most eligible man in the entire kingdom. My name is from the noblest blood around and I am the most powerful guy in terms of how many men swear allegience directly to me. I have been educated well too and I am a warrior. I've killed many a man and beast. This is why, I am a king in medieval India. Now, when you fight for ME, the king, what am i supposed to do ? Be the best man, the great warrior who hides behind his troops ? No, you are killing and maybe dying for me because I am killing and dying for me too. So if the best man you now of is prepared to get killed to get what he wants, its your JOB, as his servant and sworn sword, to help him and lay your life on the line. If i turn away and run or i die, your job towards me is done. (this is why 'kil the leader-->army broken is a big, big theme in medeival warfare). This is kind of how the feudal 'lord-servant'mentality works. Infact, most of our adversaries- like Ghori,Ghazni, etc. fought on the frontlines too. because they too were feudal.

[Tiger80]

Ok. Lets pretend I am a king/emperor in medeival India. Why do i get to be the king ? Because I am the best, most eligible man in the entire kingdom. My name is from the noblest blood around and I am the most powerful guy in terms of how many men swear allegience directly to me. I have been educated well too and I am a warrior. I've killed many a man and beast. This is why, I am a king in medieval India. Now, when you fight for ME, the king, what am i supposed to do ? Be the best man, the great warrior who hides behind his troops ? No, you are killing and maybe dying for me because I am killing and dying for me too. So if the best man you now of is prepared to get killed to get what he wants, its your JOB, as his servant and sworn sword, to help him and lay your life on the line. If i turn away and run or i die, your job towards me is done. (this is why 'kil the leader-->army broken is a big, big theme in medeival warfare). This is kind of how the feudal 'lord-servant'mentality works. Infact, most of our adversaries- like Ghori,Ghazni, etc. fought on the frontlines too. because they too were feudal.

Well never heard any invader died on battle field by Indian king , infact when losing they retreat on the other hand Dahir, Prithviraj , Hemu and even Sadashiv Bhau and Vishwas rao died on battlefield , history could have been different if any one of them lived

[Muloghonto]

Don't get me wrong. Very few kings in history have been recorded as being the 'tip of the spear'- being at the very frontline of the engagement. Most kings who fought, fought within a vanguard, which means they are in battle, just not the foremost position in his troops or anything. Only if you got old or crippled (like Timur), did you get to play the general at the back. In this aspect, the Romans & the Chinese were the most pragmatic. We know of julius ceasar the great general/conqueror. The big difference is, in all but one battle, Caesar never picked up a sword or a bow or anything. He sat back, told his men to go to positions x,y,z etc. and 'orchestrated' the battle. In the pre-feudal republic/early centralized empire days ( Magadh), this too was done. but this was not how feudal society worked. You didn't get to be Rana Pratap by sitting at the back and telling men to do what is best. Even if that was the most pragmatic choice, it was not 'man enough' of a choice. You had to fight. Or else you were a darpok. This is not just an indian anomaly, its a feudal anomaly seen in a lot of places in different times of history. Indians ofcourse, were easier to tool because of the nature of our armies. See, our entire battle-theories and battle-plans were drawn up by luminaries of great empires. They banked on the fact that we didn't just have one army, we'd have 3-4 armies, with divisions, etc etc. For eg, the two most powerful empires ironically, in the south, were the Chola and the Chalukya empires of 1100s. They both threw 15,000-25,000 elephants each with 400-500K troops in a giant campaign, with engagements having up to 150K troops and 5K elephants on EACH side. we adhered to ths theory too well. As in, we didn't adapt. When our kingdoms got smaller, particularly in the north, we didn't really adopt an army principle suited for smaller kingdoms. We adhered to the 'army structure' of the large empires, with much diminished numbers. Instead of banking more on horses and armored infantry, we adhered to the principle of 'heavy chariots, light infantry, light cavalry and elephants'. This was the composition, for example, of Anandapal of the Kabul Shahis (first of the many kingdoms to fall to the afghan-turkic onslaught). It totally ignored the fact that the structures dictated & enacted successfully by the Guptas, Mauryas, Sungas, Kushans, etc. was based on a treasury that was 100x bigger. When you have light infantry, the point is for them to not get killed, but to act as screens for the real killers. Who ? Elephant, cavalry and chariots. But mostly elephants: 2000-5000 of them on the battlefield armed with 2 archers and a mahout can kill probably at the rate of atleast few hundreds per minute. The thousands of light cavalry will run down all the injured/disorganized ranks while the chariots provide cover fire. The light infantry mostly melee all over the battlefield because they are there to add 'meat' to the sandwich really. However, this doctrine fails miserably when you have 10-15K horses, 40-50K light infantry , 1000 or so chariots and 100-200 or so elephants. . Now, you don't have enough elephants to 'pin' the opposition's cavalry ( who in the case of Iranians/Central Asians, ie, foreign threats, were armies composed of medium infantry, heavy cavalry and cavalry archers). Your infantry is mostly outclassed by the turki/afghan infantry and who really rely on their cavary to do all the killing. So in a way, it came down to a lot of things. Feudalism, fragmented polities, overwhelming military & political immigration from the invaders - they all played a part.

[Muloghonto]

Well never heard any invader died on battle field by Indian king ' date=' infact when losing they retreat on the other hand Dahir, Prithviraj , Hemu and even Sadashiv Bhau and Vishwas rao died on battlefield , history could have been different if any one of them lived[/quote'] Yes, because Dahir, Hemu and Sadashiv were idiots who rode elephants (in imitation of our great emperors of the past, who also rode elephants- duh, the emperor usually commanded the most important division of the army- the legions of elephants!). Except, unlike our great emperors, they didnt ride divisions of 1000s of elephants, they rode divisions of dozens of elephants. In battle, its not that hard for this small number of elephants to get seperated and picked off. We are a ritual oriented society, so in a way, IMO, our adherence to this type of 'rituals' and 'norms' to battle simply failed to adapt to our adversaries. All the successful invaders of India have been a cavalry power, till the British. The Kushans, the Shakas, the Hepthalites, the Turks,Afghans, Mughals- all of them, each and every one of them, were armies based on mostly cavalry- over 50% of the army was a mix of heavy cavalry & cavalry archers, with medium infantry. So when things got dire for them, their king, who usually commanded the cavalry division, fecked off pretty fast. Remember, one thing elephants don't do, is 'fast', compared to actual cavalry. IMO, its not really true that no-invader of importance ever died invading India. We Indians actually killed off Junaid, a pretty highly regarded commander of the Caliphate and his successor too. When India was in the 'Delhi Sultanate-Empire' period, it was actually pretty powerful near the early days. We killed off several really highly regarded Mongol generals when the Mongol Empire invaded India (By Mongol,i mean the actual Mongol empire- the one that spanned China to Hungary, killed everything, etc etc). We also happened to've killed off Mohammed Ghauri, though it was a ninja thing more than a battle thing.

[Muloghonto]

PS: Sadashiv had terrible strategic sense. He alienated every single North Indian ally, at a time when Maratha Empire's direct authority didn't stretch north of Bundelkhand (and not in Marwar). Then, he had the audacity to move around with his army tens of thousands of 'teerth-yatris' with the army. He fought a good tactical engagement but lost to a good tactician in Durrani who operated from much better strategic sense, because Sadashiv fought from such strategic handicap of fighting an adversary while protecting a huge baggage train + tirth yatri camps. Plus Durrani was wise enough to have allies. Marathas fought a valiant battle and actually killed the Afghan Empire in Panipat ( because ironically enough, the victory was so Pyrrhic for the Durranis that their empire collapsed pretty fast and they were unable to deal with the loss of so many soldiers- over 40,000 was the Durrani loss- when rebellions broke out and the Sikhs rose up). But, the Marathas pretty much wrote the book on 'this is how you lose a campaign despite having better army' with the Panipat campaign. Worst campaign in history ever.

[Raghav_12]

PS: Sadashiv had terrible strategic sense. He alienated every single North Indian ally, at a time when Maratha Empire's direct authority didn't stretch north of Bundelkhand (and not in Marwar). Then, he had the audacity to move around with his army tens of thousands of 'teerth-yatris' with the army. He fought a good tactical engagement but lost to a good tactician in Durrani who operated from much better strategic sense, because Sadashiv fought from such strategic handicap of fighting an adversary while protecting a huge baggage train + tirth yatri camps. Plus Durrani was wise enough to have allies. Marathas fought a valiant battle and actually killed the Afghan Empire in Panipat ( because ironically enough, the victory was so Pyrrhic for the Durranis that their empire collapsed pretty fast and they were unable to deal with the loss of so many soldiers- over 40,000 was the Durrani loss- when rebellions broke out and the Sikhs rose up). But, the Marathas pretty much wrote the book on 'this is how you lose a campaign despite having better army' with the Panipat campaign. Worst campaign in history ever.

If I am not missing something battle was fought with Abdali not this Durrani ??? Marathas had dug themselves deep in hole by the time they actually decided to go for war. If they had taken that decision earlier, things could have been much different. All valiant effort was in vain.

[Yoda-esque]

If I am not missing something battle was fought with Abdali not this Durrani ??? Marathas had dug themselves deep in hole by the time they actually decided to go for war. If they had taken that decision earlier, things could have been much different. All valiant effort was in vain.

both are the same,durrani being the tribe the war was not a one sided affair,the durrani empire was thoroughly weakened after this

[Muloghonto]

If I am not missing something battle was fought with Abdali not this Durrani ??? Marathas had dug themselves deep in hole by the time they actually decided to go for war. If they had taken that decision earlier, things could have been much different. All valiant effort was in vain.

ahmed shah abdali was titled 'dur-e-durrani', which means pearl of pearls or some shyte like that. henceforth, his direct dynasty were known as durranis.

[Yoda-esque]

Longest war in Indian history was fought between Mughals and Marathas for the Deccan

[gs]

Fascinating discussion so far. One that has been thoroughly ignored by the NCERT textbooks. @Muloghonto -- "Respect" \.../

[Yoda-esque]

Fascinating discussion so far. One that has been thoroughly ignored by the NCERT textbooks. @Muloghonto -- "Respect" \.../

read Panipat by Vishwas Patil in case you interested in Maratha history there's some last names like Ghorpade ,Shiwale .You'll be amazed at the origins of those names

[Muloghonto]

There was nobody to think of United India from local emperors and dynasties. The whole concept of ruling a complete india was missing from all kingdoms of India. Other than Marathas of 18th century none of rulers even tried to control whole country. That's why I have always been in awe of Maratha emperors (Peshwas) and read a lot about them out of interest.

In pre-modern times, it was exceedingly difficult for a northern dynasty to control the deccan and vice versa. Basically because when you look at India, it becomes clear that around middle of india, where narmada meets the arabian sea, all the way east to practically the mahanadi delta, is a a very hard zone to traverse north/south with an army. There are no clear valleys or plains to go through and the ambush-points are many. This also means that conventional means of ruling the deccan ( with either relative branches acting as governors or local nobles being made governors) leads to eventual loss of defacto control of the deccan, as these areas are not easily connected to the north and enfocing control is difficult. Theres only one group of people in history who mastered the challenge of ruling far-flung outposts without much loss of command in pre-modern times: the Chinese. They invented a novel way of ruling, via the beurocrat class. The beurocrat himself came from a powerful mercantile family but himself was allowed to own no significant land (as in he can own mansions allright and have authority, but no jaagir to derive income from, he was a paid official) and was rotated through the provinces every 5-10 years, depending on the emperor. To be a beurocrat, you had to pass the chinese civil service exam, an imperial standardized test that focussed on governance. Without this system, it becomes very hard to hold geographic areas that are not contiguous. Not just for us Indians but also for Persians, Arabs, etc. When you compound the fact that India has had a much bigger population than almost anyone in history, it becomes a very hard thing to do because ruling millions of sq km of land is far easier than ruling millions of people. But then again, the Chinese value system was far different than ours. In ours, like in European systems, we ordered our society in the warrior(king)/Priest(church/guru) at the top followed by merchants and bottom-most were farmers and labor class. In the Chinese value system, it was Emperor(divine being practically)-Beurocrat-Warrior-farmer/labor class- merchants (yes, merchants were the bottom class of chinese society!) In the Indian context, the lack of such beurocrats seemed to be the biggest hurdle in holding the empire together. The mauryan empire disintegrated not because it went buddhist but because after 5-6 generations of being 'governors' of far-flung Kashmir or Afghanistan or Godavari region ( center of power was Bihar), the local Maurya clans effectively became independent and without strong central leadership, were impossible to control. The Kushans ultimately could not break through the Satavahanas but the only other pre-British power to establish hegemony over almost all of India were the Guptas- conventional history has them starting their empire phase from 300 AD, which lasted almost 200 years of Gupta dominance, seeing almost all of Pakistan east of Indus and practically of of India except the far flung eastern-most states and Tamil Nadu come under direct Gupta rule or vassalage. And they did it through matrimonial alliance because it was easier to keep an overlord relationship with the smaller deccan kingdoms that way than try to absorb them outright.

[FischerTal]

Mullaghonto change your moniker to world encyclopedia :protest: