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

For his next Indian campaign, in 1179, Muhammad astutely took the northern route, through the Khyber Pass, and advanced into Punjab. This was essentially a pillaging raid, like Mahmud’s raids, and was followed by a few similar raids in the succeeding years. But gradually the nature and objective of his campaigns changed, from depredation to conquest. This change was particularly evident after his 1186 annexation of western Punjab from Khusrav Malik, the last Ghaznavid sultan there.

The occupation of western Punjab opened for Muhammad the gateway into the Indo-Gangetic Plane, the heartland of India. The region was politically fragmented at this time, and consisted of a number of kingdoms of varying sizes. Many of these kingdoms were ruled by Rajput rajas, the most prominent of whom were Prithviraja of Ajmer in Rajasthan and Jayachandra of Kanauj in Uttar Pradesh. Prithviraja’s kingdom extended from Rajasthan northward into eastern Punjab, and that made him the immediate neighbour and inevitable adversary of Muhammad, especially as the sultan’s raids extended deep into the northern districts of Prithviraja’s kingdom.

A military conflict between Prithviraja and Muhammad then became inevitable. And as Prithviraja prepared for war he was joined by a number of local Rajput chieftains, whose lands had been ravaged, and their women violated, by Turks.

Prithviraja then, accompanied by allied rajas, set out to confront Muhammad. He commanded, according to an evidently hyperbolic account, an incredibly large army of 200,000 cavalry, 3000 elephants, and a vast horde of infantry. The opposing forces met at Tarain, a hundred-odd kilometres north-west of Delhi, and in the ensuing battle Rajputs completely routed Turks. Muhammad himself was severely wounded in the battle by a javelin thrown at him by a Hindu chieftain, and he very nearly collapsed on the battlefield, but was saved by an alert and agile soldier, who sprang up behind the sultan on his horse, steadied him, and galloped away to safety with him.

THIS WAS IN 1191. Muhammad was honour-bound to avenge his defeat. So, after recuperating in Ghazni and replenishing his army, he once again, in the very next year, advanced into India to confront Prithviraja. And once again the opposing forces met at Tarain. The accounts of the composition of the rival armies and what happened in the battle are given variously in different sources. According to one account, Prithviraja led into this battle an even larger army than the one he had deployed in the first battle of Tarain—300,000 cavalry, 3000 elephants and countless foot soldiers! Further, he is said to have had with him 150 Hindu chieftains, who swore to defeat Turks or die in the battle.

More credible is the account of the deployment given in Hammira-mahakavya , an epic poem by the fourteenth century Jain writer Nayachandra Suri. According to Suri, Prithviraja, overconfident because of his previous easy victory over Muhammad, advanced against the sultan with a small body of soldiers, as his top generals and several divisions of his army were then engaged in campaigns elsewhere. His minister Somesvara saw the folly of the raja’s move and tried to dissuade him from advancing, but Prithviraja, apparently viewing the advice as impudent and inauspicious, cut off the ears of the minister in a rage and dismissed him. Somesvara then, clearly seeing the writing on the wall, defected to Turks.

Muhammad is said to have led into this battle a cavalry force of 52,000, which is quite probably an exaggerated figure. Some sources even give the strength of his cavalry as 120,000! But whatever the actual size of the two armies, the Rajput army certainly would have been very much larger than the Turkish army. So the only way Muhammad could win the battle against Prithviraja was by adopting some daringly ingenious tactics.

Muhammad was equal to the challenge. He divided his army into five divisions, and at dawn on the day of the battle sent four of the divisions, all mounted archers, to attack the Rajputs from all four sides. They were told to attack the enemy in waves and shower them with arrows, and then, every time the enemy advanced, quickly retreat by pretending flight. Muhammad’s objective was to harry, bewilder and disarray the Rajput army. And it worked. By late afternoon, when the Rajput army had become totally disordered, Muhammad charged into it with the fifth division of his cavalry that he had held in reserve, and routed it. Prithviraja then got down from his elephant, mounted a horse and attempted to flee from the battlefield, but was overtaken and captured.

There are two different versions of what subsequently happened to the raja. According to one account, Muhammad, along with the captive raja, proceeded from the battlefield to Ajmer, the Rajput capital. There he initially restored Prithviraja to his throne, as a tributary ruler, but later executed him, suspecting him of being treasonous, and enthroned his son. Other sources state that Prithviraja was caught and beheaded while attempting to flee from Tarain after the battle.

Muhammad’s next target was Delhi. But there was hardly any opposition to him there, and the city was surrendered to him by its governor after a token resistance. The sultan then appointed Qutb-ud-din Aibak, his trusted general, as his deputy in India, and retired to Ghazni. But he was back in India the very next year, to confront Jayachandra, who ruled over an extensive kingdom in the Gangetic Valley, with Kanauj as his capital. Jayachandra had stood morosely aloof when several other Rajput chiefs rallied to the support of Prithviraja in his battles against Muhammad, for there was intense political rivalry between Prithviraja and Jayachandra, as was natural and inevitable between neighbouring kings. And this antipathy was aggravated by bitter personal animosity between the two kings, because of Prithviraja’s ‘abduction’ of Jayachandra’s daughter Samyogita.

THE PRITHVIRAJA-SAMYOGITA romance is celebrated in Prithviraja-raso , an epic Sanskrit poem. This work as it exists now is of uncertain date and authorship, and has several different versions, but its core section is traditionally attributed to Chand Bardai, who is said to have been a court poet of Prithviraja. According to the epic, Samyogita was enamoured of the raja’s heroic persona, and had been in secret romantic correspondence with him for quite a while. Meanwhile Jayachandra arranged, as was required by royal custom, the swayamvara ceremony of the princess, for her to choose a groom from among the princes who had assembled in a hall in the palace on the invitation of the raja. Prithviraja was deliberately not invited to the ceremony, and Jayachandra compounded that slight by placing at the door of the swayamvara hall a mock statue of Prithviraja, depicting him as a doorkeeper.

As was customary, Samyogita then walked down the line of the seated princes with a flower garland in her hand, to choose a groom by garlanding him. But she passed them all one by one and went to the door of the hall and, as the astounded princes watched, garlanded Prithviraja’s statue. And in an instant she was seized by the raja, who was hiding nearby with a few cohorts — evidently by secret arrangement with the princess — and they sped off on horses to Ajmer, repulsing the pursuing soldiers of Jayachandra.

In general terms there is nothing improbable about the story, though many of its details are no doubt dreamed up by the poet. This incident is said to have happened between the first and second battle of Tarain. The rout of Prithviraja in the second battle of Tarain therefore delighted Jayachandra; according to folklore, he even celebrated the event by organising a festive illumination in his capital. But he was not fated to savour that euphoria for long, because Turks presently descended on Kanauj, and in a battle fought on the banks of Yamuna, the raja, an easy target on his grand elephant, was shot dead by a Ghuri archer, upon which the Rajput army predictably scattered. This was followed, as usual, by an orgy of carnage and rapine by Turks. Jayachandra was the last great Hindu monarch of North India, and the extinction of his dynasty was a major event in the history of medieval India.