And it so happened that several VO visitors turned to me with a request to tell me about the armor and weapons of Indian warriors of past eras. It turned out that there is enough information for this. Moreover, not even for one material. And besides, a number of photographs of original Indian weapons not only from European, but also, in fact, from Indian museums, and although they are not of high quality, it will undoubtedly be interesting to look at them. Well, then everything will be like this:
"With chariots and elephants and horsemen and many ships"
(First Book of Maccabees 1:17)
"There is no count of diamonds in stone caves, no count of pearls in the midday sea …" - this was the opinion of Europeans about the riches of India for many hundreds of years. However, the main wealth of India was not at all precious stones, but in iron! Even in the days of Alexander the Great, Indian steel was highly valued and was used to produce only the best weapons. The famous centers of arms production in the medieval East were Bukhara and Damascus, but … they received metal for it from India. It was the ancient Indians who mastered the secret of the production of damask steel, known in Europe as Damascus. And they also managed to tame and use elephants in battles, and just like their horses, they dressed them in armor made of chain mail and metal plates!
War elephant. Philadelphia Museum of Art.
In India, several grades of steel of various qualities were produced. Steel went to the production of various types of weapons, which were then exported not only to the markets of the East, but also to Europe. Many types of weapons were inherent only in this country and were not used anywhere else. If they were bought, they were considered a curiosity. Chakra, a flat throwing disc used in India until the middle of the 19th century, was very dangerous in skillful hands. The outer edge of the disc was razor sharp, and the edges of the inner opening were blunt. When throwing, the chakra was vigorously spun around the index finger and thrown at the target from its full swing. After that, the chakra flew with such force that at a distance of 20-30 m it could cut the trunk of a green bamboo 2 cm thick. Sikh warriors wore several chakras on their turbans at once, which, among other things, protected them from above from a saber strike. Damask chakras were often decorated with golden notches and religious inscriptions were made on them.
Chakra. Indian throwing ring. (Metropolitan Museum, New York)
In addition to ordinary daggers, the Indians very widely used kutar - a dagger with a handle perpendicular to its longitudinal axis. Above and below it had two parallel plates, ensuring the correct position of the weapon and at the same time protecting the hand from someone else's blow. Sometimes a third wide plate was also used, which covered the rear of the hand. The handle was held in a fist, and the blade was, as it were, an extension of the hand, so that the blow here was directed by the stronger muscles of the forearm, and not the wrist. It turned out that the blade was an extension of the hand itself, thanks to which they could strike from various positions, not only while standing, but even lying prone. Kutars had both two and three blades (the latter could stick out in different directions!), Have sliding and curved blades - for every taste!
Koutar with a guard to protect the hand of the 16th century. Weight 629.4 g (Metropolitan Museum, New York)
In India, whatever museum you visit, there are cutars at every step!
A very original weapon was a pair of antelope horns, which had steel tips and were connected on one handle together with a guard to protect the hand, with points in different directions. Nepal was the birthplace of the kukri knife of a specific shape. It was originally used to hack its way through the jungle, but later ended up in the arsenal of Nepalese Gurkha warriors.
Not far from India, on the island of Java, another original blade was born - the kris. It is believed that the first kris were made in Java by a legendary warrior named Juan Tuaha back in the 14th century. Later, when the Muslims invaded Java and began to persistently plant Islam there, they also became familiar with this weapon. Having appreciated these unusual daggers, the invaders began to use them themselves.
To whom and why he could in the XVIII century. do you need such a sword? (Metropolitan Museum, New York)
The blades of the first kris were short (15–25 cm), straight and thin, and were entirely made of meteoric iron. Subsequently, they were somewhat lengthened and made wavy (flame-shaped), which facilitated the penetration of weapons between bones and tendons. The number of waves varied (from 3 to 25), but was always odd. Each set of convolutions had its own meaning, for example, three waves meant fire, five were associated with five elements, and the absence of bends expressed the idea of unity and concentration of spiritual energy.
Malay kris. (Museum in Yogyakarta, Indonesia)
The blade, made of an alloy of iron and meteorite nickel, consisted of several multiple forged layers of steel. The special value of the weapon was given by the moiré-like pattern on its surface (pamor), formed when the product was treated with vegetable acids, so that the grains of stable nickel stood out clearly against the background of deeply etched iron.
The double-edged blade had a sharp asymmetrical expansion near the guard (ganja), often decorated with a slotted ornament or patterned notch. The handle of the kris was made of wood, horn, ivory, silver or gold and was carved, with a more or less sharp bend at the end. A characteristic feature of the Chris was that the handle was not fixed and easily turned on the shank.
When gripping the weapon, the bend of the handle was placed on the little finger side of the palm, and the upper part of the guard covered the root of the index finger, the tip of which, together with the tip of the thumb, squeezed the base of the blade near the lower part of the ganja. The kris tactic involved a quick thrust and pull. As for the "poisoned" kris, they were prepared quite simply. They took dried dope seeds, opium, mercury and white arsenic, mixed everything thoroughly and pounded in a mortar, after which the blade was covered with this compound.
Gradually, the length of the kris began to reach 100 cm, so that in fact it was no longer a dagger, but a sword. All in all, in Southeast Asia, up to the present, there are more than 100 varieties of this type of weapon.
Handa sword is on the right.
In general, the edged weapons of India and the lands adjacent to it were extremely diverse. Like many other peoples of Eurasia, the national weapon of the Hindus was the straight sword, the Khanda. But they also used their own types of sabers, distinguished by a relatively small curvature of a wide blade, starting from the very base of the blade. Excellent forging craftsmen, Indians could make blades that had a slot on the blade, and pearls were inserted into it, which rolled freely in it and did not fall out! One can imagine the impression they made, rolling through the slots, on an almost black blade made of Indian damask steel. The handles of Indian sabers were no less rich and pretentious. Moreover, unlike the Turkish and Persian ones, they had a cup-like guard to protect the hand. Interestingly, the presence of a guard was also typical for other types of Indian weapons, including even such traditional ones as the mace and the poleaxe.
Shamshir - saber of the Iranian-Indian model, early XIX century. from Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh. Length 98, 43 cm (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York)
Very curious were Indian chain mail with a set of steel plates in front and back, as well as helmets, which in India in the XVI-XVIII centuries. they were often made from separate segmental plates connected by chain mail. Chain mail, judging by the miniatures that have come down to us, were both long and short to the elbow. In this case, they were very often supplemented with bracers and elbow pads, which often covered the entire wrist.
Bakhterets XVII century (Metropolitan Museum, New York)
Horse warriors often wore elegant bright robes over the chain mail, many of which had steel gilded discs on their chests as additional protection. Knee pads, legguards and leggings (chain mail or in the form of one-piece forged metal plates) were used to protect the legs. However, in India, metal protective footwear (as in other countries of the East), unlike the protective footwear of European knights, did not receive distribution.
Indian shield (dhal) of the 19th century from Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh. (Royal Ontario Museum, Canada)
Indian shield (dhal) from Rajasthan, 18th century Crafted from rhino skin and embellished with rhinestone embellishments. (Royal Ontario Museum, Canada)
It turns out that in India, as well as in all other places, right up to the 18th century, the armament of the heavily armed cavalry was purely knightly, although again not as heavy as it was in Europe until the 16th century. Horse armor was also widely used here, or at least cloth blankets, which in this case were complemented by a metal mask.
Kichin horse shells were usually made of leather and covered with cloth, or they were lamellar or lamellar shells, recruited from metal plates. As for horse armor, in India, despite the heat, they were popular until the 17th century. In any case, from the memoirs of Afanasy Nikitin and some other travelers, one can understand that they saw there the cavalry "fully dressed in armor", and the horse masks on horses were trimmed with silver, and "for the majority they were gilded," and the blankets were sewn of multicolored silk. corduroy, satin and "fabric from Damascus".
Armor from India of the 18th - 19th centuries (Metropolitan Museum, New York)
The compound oriental bow was also well known in India. But due to the peculiarities of the Indian climate - very humid and hot - such onions have not become widespread. Having excellent damask steel, the Indians made from it small bows suitable for horsemen, and bows for infantrymen were made of bamboo in the manner of the solid-wood bows of English shooters. Indian infantry of the XVI-XVII centuries. already quite widely used long-barreled wick muskets equipped with bipods for ease of shooting, but they were constantly in short supply, since it was extremely difficult to produce them in large quantities in handicraft production.
Indian bow and arrow.
In addition, the use of firearms did not correspond very well to the moral and ethical views of the Hindus. So, in one of the Sanskrit texts of that time it was said: "A commander should not use any guile (meanness) in war, should not use poisoned arrows, nor large or small fire weapons, nor any kind of fire-fighting devices."
A feature of the Indian strike weapon was the presence of a guard even on six-piers and maces.
As for how chivalrous the position of the Indian soldiers who served in the heavily armed cavalry was, everything was exactly the same as in other regions of Eurasia. For the warrior caste, land allotments were allocated to the Amars, which were given for life, subject to the provision of a certain number of well-armed soldiers. In turn, these large land plots were transferred by their owners to their vassals in parts, and they received income from the peasants. The actual independence of the large princes led to endless strife between them, which was constantly used by foreign conquerors. Only one of them - the Samanid ruler Mukhmud Ghaznevi in one of his campaigns to the north of India captured 57 thousand slaves and 350 war elephants, not counting gold, precious stones and other booty.
Armor for the rider and horse. Iran, India. Around 1450 - 1550 (Metropolitan Museum, New York)
In 1389, India suffered greatly from the invasion of Tamerlane, who captured and plundered Delhi, and took many of its inhabitants captive.
Swords are straight, but with a slightly curved blade at the end. This is normal for medieval India!
But the most cruel blow to the power of the Delhi sultans was inflicted by their own vassals, who, because of their dissatisfaction with the rule of Sultan Ibrahim Lodi in 1525, called for the help of the ruler of Kabul, Sultan Babur.
A descendant of Tamerlane and the experienced commander Babur himself defeated Ibrahim Shah and seized his throne. The decisive battle between them took place at Panipat on April 21, 1526. Despite the numerical superiority of the Delhi army, which also had 100 war elephants, Babur won a complete victory thanks to the skillful use of his numerous artillery. Moreover, to protect the guns and musketeers, Babur skillfully used fortifications from carts, which were tied with belts for this.
As befits a devout Muslim, Babur attributed his successes to the will of Allah: “As I hoped,” he wrote in his notes “Babur-name”, “the great Lord did not make us suffer and endure in vain and helped us overcome a strong enemy and a vast state like Hindustan."
Helmet 1700 (Metropolitan Museum, New York)
Since Babur came to India from the territory that was then called Mogolistan, and even considered himself a descendant of Genghis Khan, the Indians began to call him and everyone who came with him Mughals, and his state - the state of the Great Mughals.
The cavalry, as before, remained the main striking force of the Mughal army, therefore, in order to suppress the willfulness of the feudal lords, who did not want to exhibit the prescribed number of mounted warriors and appropriate the salaries due to them, one of the rulers introduced the obligatory branding of horses. Now the troops, taken out for inspection, had to have horses with the brand of each sovereign prince.
After 30 years, the Hindus revolted, and again in the second battle at Panipat on November 5, 1556, their army, numbering 100,000 people and 1,500 war elephants, was defeated by the 20,000th army of Sultan Akbar. The outcome of the battle, and this time was decided by the preponderance of the Mughals in artillery. Under the fire of cannons, the elephants attacking the Mughals fled and crushed the ranks of the Hindu army, which led them to a complete defeat.
Helmet made of 18th century printed fabric Weight 598.2 g (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York)
It was artillery that dominated the battlefields in the internecine wars of the pretenders to the throne in the Mughal empire, which the Indian historian Sarkar characterized as "a dispute between a sword and gunpowder." And the French doctor Bernier (1625-1688), who stayed in India for 12 years, wrote in his book “History of the last political upheavals in the state of the Great Mogul”: “He (Aurangzeb) ordered all the cannons to be built in the first row, tying them to one another with chains to block the path of the cavalry. Behind the cannons, he lined up a large number of light camels, tying them in front of small guns the size of a double musket … so that a person sitting on the back of a camel can load and unload these cannons without going down to the ground … ".
Portrait of Shah Aurangzeb on horseback. Around 1650 (San Diego Museum of Art).
A few pages further Bernier detailed the organization of the then Indian artillery: “Artillery is divided into two kinds. The first is large or heavy artillery, the second is light, or, as they call it, stirrup. As for the heavy artillery, I remember that … this artillery consisted of 70 cannons, mostly cast iron … mostly cast, and some of them are so heavy that you need 20 pairs of bulls to drag them, and some of them have elephants to help bulls, pushing and pulling the wheels of the carts with their trunks and heads when the guns get stuck or when you have to climb a steep mountain …
Siege of the Rathambore fortress. Akbarname. OK. 1590 (Victoria and Albert Museum, London).
Rapid artillery, which seemed … very elegant and well trained, consisted of 50 or 60 small field bronze cannons, each placed on a small cart, well made and well painted, with a chest in the front and back for the projectiles; she was driven by two fine horses; the coachman drove her like a carriage; it was decorated with small red ribbons, and each had a third horse, which was being led by the bridle by an assistant gunner-coach …”. "The artillery triumphed over the cavalry here," Bernier summed up.
Yushman. India 1632 - 1633 Weight 10, 7 kg. (Metropolitan Museum, New York)
Thus, such a curious moment becomes clear as the role of the animals themselves in the battle and the associated specificity of their combat use. It is understandable why the horse became the main fighting animal of man: it is strong enough to carry a heavily armed rider, and with the appropriate training can very well help him in battle. By the way, it was the Indians who were the first to start training horses in the East. The earliest written information on the care of horses and their training was left to us by Kikkuli, the equestrian of the Hittite king in about 1400 BC. NS. The surviving texts are written in Hittite script and Babylonian cuneiform on clay tablets and contain detailed instructions on how to tame, groom, and harness horses. However, some specific terms and numerical data indicate that many of this information in the Kikkuli treatise was borrowed by the Hittites from the Hindus.
