Abraham Eraly - The Age of Wrath - A History of the Delhi Sultanate

This mode of military operation persisted in India till late medieval times. Thus we repeatedly come across phrases like ‘attack and lay waste the country’, ‘ravage the country from end to end’, ‘kill and ravage as much as possible’, ‘plunder and lay waste all the country,’ ‘plunder and destroy every inhabited place’, in the orders given to the Mughal army during the reign of Shah Jahan, as recorded by the contemporary chronicler Abdul-Hamid Lahauri. The conditions in the countryside around the battlefield, as well as in conquered cities, usually remained anarchic for several months after a battle. Thus Caesar Frederic, a sixteenth-century Venetian traveller in India, was held up for seven months in Vijayanagar after the battle of Talikota, as brigands were then rampaging through the land.

Fair treatment of the defeated enemy was uncommon in medieval India, the attitude of the victor being that he who is an enemy today could be an enemy again tomorrow, so it was best to exterminate him. Theirs was a feral relationship. Sometimes the defeated king and his chief officers were gibbeted, as a warning to other potential enemies. Often the enemy soldiers were herded into prison camps and sold as slaves. Muhammad Ghuri during one of his Indian campaigns is said to have captured so many of the enemy soldiers that they glutted the slave market, and their price fell so sharply that they had to be sold for just a dinar each. It was only very rarely that the victor treated the people of a conquered region with fairness and compassion, as Krishnadeva, according to Nuniz, is said to done when he captured Raichur.

Sometimes a raja, defeated by a sultan, became a Muslim, even ate beef, to save his life and throne, as a king of Jammu is said to have done once. ‘Among these infidels there is no greater crime and abomination than eating the flesh of a cow or killing a cow, but he ate the flesh in the company of Muslims,’ writes Timur in his autobiography. Often the defeated raja gave one of his daughters in marriage to the victor as a peace offering.

There were however several exceptions to such servile conduct, instances of Hindu kings preferring death to the humiliation of defeat and servitude. According to Al-Utbi, ‘there is a custom among … [some Hindu kings] that if any of them is taken prisoner by an enemy … it is not lawful for him to continue to reign … [So king Jayapala of Punjab, on being captured in war and later released by Mahmud Ghazni, decided that] death by cremation was preferable to shame and dishonour. So he commenced with shaving off his hair, and then threw himself upon the fire till he was burnt.’

A variation of this practice was jauhar, mass ritual suicide by the residents of a fort in imminent danger of being captured by the enemy. This involved the women and children of the raja, as well as the women and children of his nobles, immolating themselves, voluntarily or by force, in a funeral pyre built in the fort, and then the men storming out to fight the enemy, to kill and be killed.

The first known account of this practice is in Chach-nama . The custom was probably introduced into India by Central Asian migrants in the late classical period, and seems to have been initially confined to Rajputs, who were mostly migrants. In time the custom spread to the ruling class of some other people also. Thus, according to Battuta, the raja of Kampili in Karnataka, on the verge of his castle being stormed by the army of Muhammad Tughluq, ‘commanded a great fire to be prepared and lighted. Then … he said to his wives and daughters, “I am going to die, and such of you as prefer it, do the same.” Then it was seen that each one of these women washed herself, rubbed her body with sandalwood paste, kissed the ground before the raja … and threw herself upon the pyre. All perished. The wives of his nobles, ministers, and chief men imitated them, and other women also did the same. The raja, in his turn, washed, rubbed himself with sandalwood paste, and took his arms, but did not put on his breastplate. Those of his men who resolved to die with him followed his example. Then they sallied forth to meet the troops of the sultan, and fought till every one of them fell dead.’

‘India … is the most agreeable abode on the earth, the most pleasant quarter of the world,’ states Abdullah Wassaf, an early fourteenth-century Persian writer, in his long and fanciful paean on India. ‘Its dust is purer than air, and its air purer than purity itself; its delightful plains resemble the garden of paradise, and the particles of its earth are like rubies and corals … [It] is distinguished from all parts of the globe by its extreme temperateness, and by the purity of its water and air … Indeed, the charms of the country and the softness of the air, together with the variety of its wealth, precious metals, stones, and other abundant products, are beyond description … Its treasuries and depositories are like the oceans full of polished gems; its trees are in continual freshness and verdure; and the zephyrs of its air are pure and odoriferous; the various birds on its boughs are sweet-singing parrots; and the pheasants in its gardens are all graceful peacocks.

All this was mere poetic fancy by a writer who had never been to India. But even Indian writers were susceptible to such mythifications, as in the case of poet Amir Khusrav extolling India as a heavenly country—‘Hindustan is like heaven,’ he writes — even though he could plainly see before his very eyes an entirely different reality. Similarly over-effulgent is the description of India by the fourteenth-century Syrian writer Shahab-ud-din. ‘India,’ he writes, ‘is a most important country, with which no other country in the world can be compared in respect of extent, riches, the numbers of its armies, the pomp and splendour displayed by the sovereign in his progresses and habitations, and the power of his empire … Its inhabitants are remarkable for their wisdom and intelligence; no people are better able to restrain their passion, nor more willing to sacrifice their lives, for what they consider agreeable in the sight of god.’

Closer to reality, but still rather exaggerated, is the praise of medieval India given in Mukhtasiru-t Tawarikh , a chronicle by an anonymous writer who lived in India during the reign of Mughal emperor Shah Jahan. ‘India is a very large country, and it is so extensive that the other countries are not equal to a hundredth part of it. Notwithstanding its extensive area, it is populated in all places. It abounds in all quarters and every district with cities, towns, villages, caravanserais, forts, citadels, mosques, temples, monasteries, cells, magnificent buildings, delightful gardens, fine trees, pleasant green fields, running streams, and impetuous rivers … In this country there are mines of diamonds, ruby, gold, silver, copper, lead, and iron.’

SUCH FANCIFUL IMAGES of India were common in the premodern world, and they played a key role in enticing numerous migrants and invaders into India all through history. And Indians themselves, like most other people, were addicted to self-mythification. But gradually a more realistic view of India began to emerge in the reports of medieval Turkish writers and European travellers, though there was still a good amount of fancy even in these accounts, and they were inevitably marred by the racial prejudice and socio-religious bias of the chroniclers. Typical of the dichotomous view of medieval foreigners about India was what a noble told Timur when he was planning to invade India. India, he said, was an excellent country to raid and plunder, for it was fabulously wealthy, but it would be self-destructive to occupy and rule it. ‘If we establish ourselves permanently therein, our race will degenerate and our children will become like the natives of those regions, and in a few generations their strength and valour will diminish,’ he cautioned.