Ancient Indian Warfare (Military History)

Introduction
The meaning of terms like “ancient,” “classical,” “early medieval,” and “medieval” India have been the issue of some debate, and there is no absolute agreement among scholars about the exact chronology of these relatively loosely defined periods. However, it might be reasonable to say that a bibliographical essay about ancient Indian warfare should start with the Aryan invasion (if there was one!), include the Vedic period and the early state formations, and focus in particular on the Maurya Empire and the fascinating historical evidence contained in the inscriptions of Aśoka. Reference must also be made to the age of the Guptas and to the Indo-Greek kings of Bactria and their military campaigns in India. A survey of ancient India should probably end with the invasion of the Central Asian Hephthalites, which destroyed what was left of the Gupta Empire and marked the end of the classical period of north Indian states. After the Hun invasion, the political center of gravity in India moved to the south, which is generally considered the start of the medieval era. One of the great problems in the study of war and warfare in ancient India is to read the evidence found in texts in Indian and other ancient languages in conjunction with the archaeological record. There is an enormous amount of material about war in important Indian texts like the Mahābhārata and the Rāmāyaṇa, but it is often hard to say what reflects historical realities and what is simply ideology or legend. Nevertheless, an essay about ancient Indian warfare must look at these important textual sources. There is a clear time division in the scholarly study of ancient Indian warfare: before and after the discovery and publication of Kauṭilya’s Arthaśāstra in the early 20th century. This text revealed a completely new picture of ancient Indian society in general and of warfare in particular. Before the discovery of the Arthaśāstra, the political life of ancient India was clouded in the mythical world of the great epics, but the Arthaśāstra showed a highly realistic, and some would add cynical, side of ancient Indian politics. It should be mentioned that the study of ancient India has become politicized in recent times. For sections of the Hindutva movement, ancient India has become a battleground for an attempt to create a sanitized and revisionist vision of Hinduism, and there have been conflicts over schoolbooks and curricula both in India and in other countries. However, ancient Indian ideas and practices of warfare are not only about Hinduism. The heterodox religious movements, like Buddhism and Jainism, also were intimately entwined in the political realities of ancient India, and the texts of these traditions have important things to say about war and violence. Thus, a section about Buddhism and Jainism seems necessary. Of course, these systems are probably most famous in the West for their presumed rejection of violence, but the fact is that the debates about violence (hiṃsā) and nonviolence (ahiṃsā) were important to many of the religious and philosophical traditions in India. For this reason, a bibliographical essay about war in ancient India needs a separate section about this important topic.
General Overviews
Compared to the great number of books that have been written about the religion and culture of ancient India, rather few have appeared on the subject of politics and war. Scholars and students unfamiliar with the topic of ancient Indian warfare may start by reading Roy 2004, which contains a lot of information about medieval and modern India as well, but gives an overview of general trends. They should also be familiar with Dikshitar 1999. Singh 1997 is still among the most important of the books that aim to cover all aspects of ancient Indian warfare and should probably serve as one of the first texts to be read by students interested in the subject. As an introduction to the ideological and religious sides of war, Patton 2007 gives a broad overview of some of the fundamental ways in which ancient Indian narrative traditions treat violence.
Dikshitar, Ramachandra V. R. War in Ancient India. New Delhi: Cosmo, 1999.
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An early attempt to describe Indian warfare from different angles by using the archaeological and textual evidence available at the time. The book sometimes takes a naive approach. Originally published in 1944.
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Patton, Laurie L. “Telling Stories about Harm: An Overview of Early Indian Narratives.” In Religion and Violence in South Asia: Theory and Practice. Edited by John R. Hinnells and Richard King, 10–38. New York: Routledge, 2007.
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Patton explores how different ancient Indian traditions, from the Vedic and Upanishadic worlds to the pragmatics of the Arthaśāstra and the great narrative cosmos of the Mahābhārata, approach violence ambiguously, often relying on the ever-present concept of dharma to solve tensions.
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Roy, Kaushik. From Hydaspes to Kargil: A History of Warfare in India from 326 BC to AD 1999. Delhi: Manohar, 2004.
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This book gives a bird’s-eye view of decisive wars and battles in Indian history.
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Singh, Sarva Daman. Ancient Indian Warfare: With Special Reference to the Vedic Period. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1997.
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This is a valuable attempt to put together archaeological and textual evidence from the Vedic period in order to explore the basic technologies and organizational forms of ancient Indian warfare. Of particular interest is Singh’s discussion of chariots and horses. Originally published in 1965.
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Aryans and Non-Aryans
No student of ancient Indian warfare should be ignorant about the basic outline of the debates concerning the identity and origins of the Aryans. William Jones held his famous talk at the Asiatic Society in Calcutta in 1786 explaining that the Sanskrit language had closer affinities with Greek and Latin than could possibly have been produced by accident. Much later, in the 1920s, the Indus Valley civilization was discovered, and just after the Second World War Sir R. E. Mortimer Wheeler—Director General of the Archaeological Survey of India—advanced the theory that the Indus civilization was destroyed by the invasion of an Aryan people, finding what he thought was evidence for massacres and attacks on the fortifications of the ancient cities and linking this to myths about war in Vedic texts. This Aryan invasion theory has been challenged a number of times by scholars, and many now speak rather of an Aryan migration theory. Whether the influx was violent or piecemeal, the standard scholarly opinion is that the Aryans came to India from the north. However, quite a few scholars believe that the Aryans were really the same as the Indus people, and that there is no need to posit external influences to explain the birth of Vedic civilization. The whole question has been deeply politicized in recent times, and any student or scholar interested in ancient Indian warfare needs to know about the main positions. The student might start by reading Trautmann 2007, which is a pedagogical introduction to the Aryan debate taking as its starting point the three great discoveries that are the foundations of the controversy: the discovery of the Indo-European language family, of the Dravidian language family, and of the Indus Valley civilization. In order to understand the academic debates within Indo-European studies and, to some extent, within the history and history of religions, both students and scholars should probably familiarize themselves with the main ideas related to the ancient warrior function in Dumézil 1956. It is also worth looking at how these themes are developed by some later scholars, and one may start with Lincoln 1991 and Oguibénine 1998. Finally, the Aryan debate is well covered in Bryant and Patton 2005.
Bryant, Edwin F., and Laurie L. Patton, eds. The Indo-Aryan Controversy: Evidence and Inference in Indian History. London: Routledge, 2005.
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This is a useful collection of papers explaining the different positions about the Aryan question as well as the political implications of the different views.
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Dumézil, Georges. Aspects de la fonction guerrière chez les Indo-Européens. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1956.
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Dumézil was a controversial figure, but he offered a highly influential theory about Indo-European mythology. In this small book, he examines the warrior function in the ideology of the Indo-Europeans, claiming, among other things, that there was a basic distinction between the noble figures of Arjuna or Achilles and the ugly and bloodthirsty characters of warriors like Bhīma or Heracles.
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Lincoln, Bruce. Death, War, and Sacrifice: Studies in Ideology and Practice. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1991.
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This is a collection of previously published work by a scholar of the Chicago school in the history of religions established by Mircea Eliade. Lincoln is engaged with the comparative questions of Indo-European studies, which means that much of the material is not about India. Still, the volume is useful for an understanding of ideologies and symbolism surrounding war and warriors in the Vedic world.
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Oguibénine, Boris L. “Notes on War and Religion among the Indo-Europeans.” In Essays on Vedic and Indo-European Culture. By Boris L. Oguibénine, 143–152. New Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1998.
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Oguibénine attempts to place some of the symbolism surrounding the Vedic warrior within the larger field of Indo-European warrior culture.
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Trautmann, Thomas R., ed. The Aryan Debate. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2007.
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The book includes short extracts from important historical sources and no less than five chapters about the horse as possible evidence for the identity of the Aryans with the Indus Valley people.
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War and the Nature of the Indian State
War as a historical concept (a geschichtliche Grundbegriff in the German sense) needs more attention from scholars. The modern concept of war presupposes a state-centric idea of international politics, and it is not always helpful to bring this concept along when trying to understand war in ancient India. States in ancient South Asia were not conceptualized as political spheres with clear boundaries and a high degree of political, economic, and military control from a supreme power. For the medieval Vijayanagara Empire, the Indologist Burton Stein used the concept of segmentary state to analyze the characteristics of the typical Hindu polity. It is often very difficult to say anything certain about how aspects of ancient Indian states were organized and about the ideologies that underpinned them. Still, it is important to note generally that the early Hindu concept(s) of statehood, and the ancient Indian organization of states, implied different concepts of war from those we are used to encountering in the study of European history, and we should be sensitive to such differences when working with ancient Indian materials about war. In order to get a grasp of key academic debates about the nature of the state in ancient India, students should read Thapar 1984 and fill out some of the topics by looking at the essays in Kölver 1997. For the advanced scholar, the article “Krieg” in Janssen 1982 provides important perspectives about possible conceptual pitfalls when studying war in ancient times and outside Europe. Brekke 2005 questions the usefulness of the European concept of war in an ancient Indian context; it may be read by students and scholars interested in war in general and in the comparative ethics of war in particular.
Brekke, Torkel. “The Ethics of War and the Concept of War in India and Europe.” Numen 52.1 (2005): 59–86.
DOI: 10.1163/1568527053083430Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Argues that the European concept of war can be applied only with great caution to ancient Indian history and that the Indian concept of war creates norms and ideologies of war that are different from those found in the Christian just war tradition. Available online for purchase or by subscription.
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Janssen, Wilhelm. “Krieg.” In Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe: Historisches Lexikon zur politisch-sozialen Sprache in Deutschland. Vol. 3, H–Me. Edited by Otto Brunner, Werner Conze, and Reinhart Koselleck, 567–615. Stuttgart: Klett, 1982.
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This is not an article about India, but for those who read German it is extremely useful for an awareness of the concepts we bring with us as historians when approaching the phenomenon of war in ancient non-European civilizations.
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Kölver, Bernhard. Recht, Staat und Verwaltung im Klassischen Indien. Munich: Oldenbourg, 1997.
DOI: 10.1524/9783486594355Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
This edited volume contains several important chapters (some in German, but most in English) about the development of states and politics in ancient India.
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Thapar, Romila. From Lineage to State: Social Formations in the Mid-first Millennium B.C. in the Ganga Valley. Bombay and New York: Oxford University Press, 1984.
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An important attempt to explore the political transition that took place in the middle of the first millennium BC from a lineage system to the large-scale state formations of the Nandas and Mauryas.
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Battlefield Tactics and Technologies
Archaeology is an indispensable field in any attempt to piece together a picture of ancient Indian warfare, and its results are sometimes most productive when seen in relation to textual evidence. However, one should also be aware of the fact that some scholars, both Indian and Western, have been a little too creative in their interpretation of ancient Indian sources, in the sense that they have found evidence for advanced technologies (like gunpowder weapons or flying machines) in ancient texts, and it is advisable not to spend time on the considerable amount of pseudo-scholarship in the field. The student of ancient Indian warfare should probably start out by reading Singh 1997 (originally published in 1965), as it gives a detailed and well-organized introduction to the field, as long as one keeps in mind that new data has become available since its publication. An important point of reference in the debate about the technological basis for war in ancient India is Chakrabarti 1992, which should be followed up by reading Fitzgerald 2000. Much has been said and written about the important role of the chariot in Vedic warfare, and Sparreboom 1985 is a work for those with a special interest in the subject; it may be skipped by the general student. Krishna Murthy 1966 is a short article that makes all the Sanskrit terms for weapons of war more concrete.
Chakrabarti, Dilip K. The Early Use of Iron in India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1992.
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A broad overview of the use of iron for, among other things, weapons in ancient India, this book finds no clear evidence for steel-making in the available literature.
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Fitzgerald, James L. “Sanskrit pīta and śaikya/saikya: Two Terms of Iron and Steel Technology in the Mahābārata.” Journal of the American Oriental Society 120 (2000): 44–61.
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Offers an interpretation of certain aspects of ancient Indian metallurgical techniques for making steel from the evidence of two words used for weapons in the Mahābārata and challenges Chakrabarti 1992 on this point. Available online for purchase or by subscription.
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Krishna Murthy, K. “Weapons of War in the Sculptures of Nāgārjunakoṇḍa.” Artibus Asiae 28.2–3 (1966): 211–218.
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This article attempts to relate the artistic depictions of weapons at Nāgārjunakoṇḍa to the numerous references to weapons of war in classical Indian texts. It contains drawings by artists of the main weapon types at Nāgārjunakoṇḍa. Available online for purchase or by subscription.
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Singh, Sarva Daman. Ancient Indian Warfare: With Special Reference to the Vedic Period. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1997.
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This is a valuable attempt to put together archaeological and textual evidence from the Vedic period in order to explore the basic technologies and organizational forms of ancient Indian warfare. Of particular value is Singh’s discussion of chariots and horses. Originally published in 1965.
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Sparreboom, Marcus. Chariots in the Veda. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 1985.
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This is a doctoral dissertation from the University of Leiden dealing with the important subject of chariots in Vedic warfare and society in general. Originally published in 1983.
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Violence (Hiṃsā) and Non-Violence (Ahiṃsā)
Ahiṃsā has been an important topic to many scholars and students of ancient India, and many debates about war and warfare take as their starting point the deep tension between the ideal of nonviolence and the reality of war and violence. Ahiṃsā is an important precept in several Indian religious and ethical traditions, and in ancient Indian literature we sometimes meet with attempts to resolve the basic moral problem of war. The doctrine of ahiṃsā is old, and some have argued that the idea originated in the Indus Valley civilization. Other scholars claim that ahiṃsā is connected with developments regarding the animal sacrifices that were central to the Vedic religion that dominated India around 1000–500 BCE. Others again have seen the rise of the śramaṇa movement (Buddhism, Jainism, etc.) as the main challenge to the violence of the Vedic sacrifice. The student and scholar of ancient Indian warfare may get a good grasp of these debates from Heesterman 1984, Tull 1996, Bodewitz 1999, and Halbfass 1991. Around the middle of the first millennium BCE, significant religious and philosophical transformations took place in the society centered on the Ganges plains of northern India. Movements both internal and external to the orthodox Brahmin culture challenged the practice of animal sacrifice and the beliefs that underpinned it. New philosophers claimed that the true rituals and the true sacrifices took place inside the physical body of the person who devoted himself to religious practice. The law of karma meant that acts, and violent acts in particular, had negative consequences in a future life. From this point of view, ahiṃsā was seen by many Hindus as a fundamental ingredient of right religious practice. The idea of nonviolence colored political thought in South Asia from early times. A good king would offer ahiṃsā as a way to make his subjects secure and happy, and a proclamation of nonviolent policies was thought to produce non-fear, or security (abhaya). However, the connections between the philosophical ideas of nonviolence and the ideologies of war are complex, and Clooney 2003 may be a good place to start exploring these ideas. A more general approach to Hindu ideologies of war is found in Roy 2012.
Bodewitz, Henk W. “Hindu ahiṃsā and Its Roots.” In Violence Denied: Violence, Non-violence and the Rationalization of Violence in South Asian Cultural History. Edited by Jan E. M. Houben and Karel R. van Kooij, 17–44. Brill’s Indological library 16. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 1999.
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This is a useful survey of the question of the origins of ahiṃsā, in particular the question of roots outside or inside the Vedic tradition. Bodewitz points in the direction of non-Vedic origins in ascetic traditions like Buddhism after considering the arguments of previous writers.
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Clooney, Francis X. “Pain but Not Harm: Some Classical Resources toward a Hindu Just War Theory.” In Just War in Comparative Perspective. Edited by Paul Robinson, 109–125. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2003.
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Clooney points out how sacrificial violence is justified in ancient Hinduism because it is prescribed by the Veda, while other types of killing are generally forbidden, and explores moral norms concerning violence for the warrior caste, the kṣatriyas.
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Halbfass, Wilhelm. “Vedic Apologetics, Ritual Killing, and the Foundations of Ethics.” In Tradition and Reflection: Explorations in Indian Thought. By Wilhelm Halbfass, 87–129. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991.
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This article explores the Vedic defense of ritual violence, but it extends the analysis to throw light on the intriguing doctrine of the saṃsāramocakas, i.e., groups who believe they help people escape from their demerit and bad rebirths by killing them.
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Heesterman, Jan. “Non-violence and Sacrifice.” In Proceedings of the Scandinavian Conference-Seminar of Indological Studies (Stockholm, June 1st–5th 1982). Edited by Kungl. Vitterhets, historie och antikvitets akademien, 119–127. Indologica Taurinensia 12. Turin, Italy: Edizioni Jollygrafica, 1984.
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This influential article (originally a conference paper) argues that the origins of ahiṃsā are to be found in the Brahmanic sacrificial worldview and takes the Hindu tradition of vegetarianism as evidence for this hypothesis.
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Roy, Kaushik. Hinduism and the Ethics of Warfare in South Asia: From Antiquity to the Present. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012.
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A military historian takes a bird’s-eye view of large themes in the conceptualization of war and politics in South Asia, with a particular focus on Hinduism.
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Tull, Herman W. “The Killing that Is Not Killing: Men, Cattle, and the Origins of Non-violence (ahiṃsā) in the Vedic Sacrifice.” Indo-Iranian Journal 39 (1996): 223–244.
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Tull follows Heesterman 1984 in searching for the origins of ahiṃsā inside the Vedic worldview rather than in Buddhism or in other strands of the śramaṇa movement.
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The King and His Authority
In classical India, the king was the person invested with the authority, the responsibility, and the right to wage war. Royal authority has been a favorite subject of many Indologists, and several aspects of this issue are very complex and still not properly understood by scholars. However, any student or scholar who wants to understand ancient Indian warfare should have a basic knowledge of classical Hindu ideas of kingship. The best way to get a grounding in this topic is probably to read what are among the most important textual sources for royal authority: the relevant passages of the Laws of Manu. An excellent translation of this foundational text is Doniger and Smith 1991. Students and scholars of ancient India will be familiar with this text already; chapters 7 and 8 in particular (pp. 128–196) should be read by anybody interested in warfare. The undergraduate student cannot be expected to read the very substantial article Gonda 1956, but it is a good place to start for the advanced student and scholar. Glucklich 1988 covers some of the same ground and should be read also with a view to the Arthaśāstra, keeping in mind that the Arthaśāstra and Dharmaśāstra contain several of the same ideas concerning the king’s use of violence. Inden 1998 is also substantial and complex and is probably most relevant to the advanced student and scholar.
Doniger, Wendy, and Brian K. Smith, trans. The Laws of Manu. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1991.
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A very readable translation with a good introduction to one of the key texts about politics and society in ancient India.
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Glucklich, Ariel. “The Royal Scepter (Daṇḍa) As Legal Punishment and Sacred Symbol.” History of Religions 28 (1988): 97–122.
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This is an exploration of the multivalence of the key symbol of daṇḍa and a criticism of the tendency by scholars to take daṇḍa as a simple symbol of secular military power or punishment instead of considering its great variety of religious connotations. Available online for purchase or by subscription.
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Gonda, Jan. “Ancient Indian Kingship from the Religious Point of View.” Numen 3 (January 1956): 36–71.
DOI: 10.1163/156852756X00041Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
In a series of four very substantial and learned articles in the journal Numen, Jan Gonda explained the deeply religious nature of kingship in ancient India. The next three were Numen 3 (April 1956, pp. 122–155), 4 (January 1957, pp. 24–58), and 4 (April 1957, pp. 127–164). Available online for purchase or by subscription.
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Inden, Ronald. “Ritual, Authority, and Cyclic Time in Hindu Kingship.” In Kingship and Authority in South Asia. Edited by J. F. Richards, 41–91. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998.
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Interprets the royal installation ceremony described in medieval texts and gives many details of Indian ideas about kingship. Originally published in 1978.
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The Arthaśāstra
Max Müller, the great scholar of comparative philology and mythology, wrote in 1859 that India had no place in the political history of the world. Although about it was known that there was an Indian classic of political science written by a legendary author called Kauṭilya, the actual contents of the Arthaśāstra was unknown until Rudrapatnam Shamasastry published a Sanskrit edition of the text in 1909 and a translation in 1915 on the basis of a manuscript given to him by a Brahmin. It is widely recognized that this text is one of the most important sources for an understanding of ancient Indian society, and undoubtedly the most important source for any study of war in ancient India. For a long time, the standard edition and translation was the one made by R. P. Kangle in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Kangle performed an extremely important task in making this text available with a translation and a very substantial introduction. The advanced student and scholar should certainly know about Kangle’s arguments in Part III (see Kangle 1986). However, the Arthaśāstra is a difficult text with many terms that are unknown in other sources, and Patrick Olivelle has completed a new translation (Olivelle 2013) with annotations and a substantial introduction that takes into account earlier studies and offers new and convincing ideas about authorship and dating, partly on the basis of the doctoral research by Mark McClish at the University of Texas, Austin. It is a must-read for all advanced students and scholars of ancient Indian warfare and politics in general. The scholar and advanced student interested in the development of academic arguments about Kauṭilya’s dating may also be interested in Trautmann 1971.
Kangle, R. P. The Kauṭilīya Arthaśāstra. 3 vols. 2d ed. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1986.
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This great work was for several decades the standard edition and translation of the Arthaśāstra. Originally published in 1960–1965.
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Olivelle, Patrick, trans. King, Governance and Law in Ancient India: Kauṭilya’s Arthaśāstra. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013.
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This is now the most important translation of the Arthaśāstra and absolutely essential for an understanding of ancient Indian war.
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Trautmann, Thomas R. Kauṭilya and the Arthaśāstra: A Statistical Investigation of the Authorship and Evolution of the Text. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 1971.
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This is an early example of the use of statistical methods to analyze ancient texts. Trautmann concluded that the work was by more than one author, that the dating of Kauṭilya to the reign of Chandragupta Maurya is untenable, and that the different sections of the work were composed in the 2nd century AD.
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The Mauryas and Guptas
Between the late 7th and late 5th centuries BC, the first important territorial kingdoms were established on the plains of the river Ganges in northern India, and this was the start of the proper political history of the Indian subcontinent. This was also the time of the origins of Buddhism and numerous other religious and philosophical movements. From a large number of tribal kingdoms (janapada), there emerged sixteen dominant great tribal kingdoms (mahājanapada). The capitals of these mahājanapadas grew into large cities like Rājagṛha and Vaiśālī. During the 5th century, a new phase in Indian state formation started when Magadha, one of the mahājanapadas, initiated an aggressive policy against the others, attacking and annexing them. In a short span of time, Magadha emerged as a great empire in northeastern India. The student interested in war and politics in ancient India should start by reading Thapar 2012 (originally published in 1961), keeping in mind that the author’s dating of the Arthaśāstra cannot be maintained in the light of Olivelle’s more recent work (see Olivelle 2013, cited under Arthaśāstra). Among the rulers of Magadha, Aśoka Maurya is the most famous, for obvious reasons. He ruled over a vast empire and left behind a large number of edicts carved in rocks and pillars. These edicts give an incredibly valuable view of ancient Indian culture, including ideas and attitudes regarding politics and war. The serious student of ancient India must at some point read Aśoka’s inscriptions, and the classic presentation with commentaries is Hultzsch 1877. This should be complemented by the more recent research in Falk 2006, which places all the inscriptions in their contexts. Aśoka is important for an understanding of ancient Indian war for numerous reasons, but first of all he may be regarded as a defender of a doctrine of human dignity and human rights. The edited volume Olivelle, et al. 2012 contains a number of important new interpretations of Aśoka. After Aśoka, the Maurya kingdom declined rapidly; the next great state to arise in north India was that of the Guptas. The Gupta Empire is widely regarded as the golden age of Indian culture, and many books and articles have been written about the political system of the Guptas. Mookherji 1999 (originally published in 1943) is a useful attempt to understand Gupta political life on the basis of the Arthaśāstra, but all arguments about this text should be read in light of the introduction to Olivelle 2013, cited under the Arthaśāstra. Ali 2007 is useful in trying to understand how the vocabulary of politics in general and war in particular related to the everyday realities of the political elites during the time of the Guptas.
Ali, Daud. “Violence, Courtly Manners and Lineage Formation in Early Medieval India.” Social Scientist 35.9–10 (2007): 3–21.
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Discusses the development of a new political culture and vocabulary during the Gupta period. Available online for purchase or by subscription.
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Falk, Harry. Aśokan Sites and Artefacts: A Source-Book with Bibliography. Mainz am Rhein, Germany: Von Zabern, 2006.
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An authority on Indian epigraphy gives a complete overview of the places and the geographical contexts of the inscriptions.
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Hultzsch, Eugen. Inscriptions of Asoka. New ed. Corpus inscriptionum indicarum 1. Oxford: Clarendon, 1877.
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This is the standard edition of the inscriptions of Aśoka.
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Mookherji, Radha Kumud. Chandragupta Maurya and His Times. 4th ed. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1999.
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This book attempts to reconstruct the age of Chandragupta, but relies too much on Kauṭilya. Originally published in 1943.
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Olivelle, Patrick, Janice Leoshko, and Himanshu Prabha Ray. Reimagining Aśoka: Memory and History. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.
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This edited book contains many important chapters about Aśoka and the Maurya Empire. They range from the details about the edicts and the religious and political vision they expound to the uses of Aśoka in modern cultural memory.
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Thapar, Romila. Aśoka and the Decline of the Mauryas. 3d ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198077244.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
This is still an important book to read because of Thapar’s discussion of Aśoka’s “policy of dhamma” and its meaning in the history of Indian politics. In later revisions, Thapar sticks to her original position regarding the connection of the Arthaśāstra to the Mauryas, and these aspects of her book must be read in light of other research that rejects this dating, like Trautmann 1971 and, more recently, Olivelle 2013 (both cited under Arthaśāstra). Originally published in 1961.
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The Indo-Greeks
Alexander the Great crossed the Indus River in early 326 BC. In spring 326, he fought King Porus in the battle of the river Hydaspes, i.e., the Jhelum, a tributary of the Indus. Alexander’s conquest in today’s Afghanistan and Pakistan did not have any impact on the great contemporary Indian Nanda Empire and is not mentioned in Indian sources, but later Hellenic kingdoms in the region played an important role in the history of India after the decline of the Mauryas. In 185 BC, the last Maurya emperor was assassinated by his Hindu Brahmin general Puśyamitra. During the same years, Demetrius I of Bactria crossed the Hindu Kush mountains, conquered ancient cities like Taxila, and started his military campaigning into India. William Tarn believed (Tarn 2010, originally published in 1938) that this campaign ended in Menander’s taking the Indian capital of Pataliputra, far to the east on the plains of the Ganges, but Narain 2003 (originally published in 1957) argued that hard evidence is lacking. Civil wars in Bactria, in one of which Demetrius was killed, were a main reason why Greek military advancement into northern India did not last. Widemann 2007 gives a detailed account of these conflicts, to a large extent based on numismatic evidence. Coinage is a key source of historical evidence for the Indo-Greeks. The Greeks from the northeast, or Yavanas as they were called in India, were discussed as evil invaders in Indian sources, but ancient Indian texts often are ambiguous as historical records. However, the student should start by reading Narain 2003, the standard work. Although superseded on several points by new evidence, the author still gives the best introduction to the subject.
Davids, T. W. Rhys, trans. The Questions of King Milinda. Oxford: Clarendon, 1890.
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Originally published in Pali. This text (available online in several places) is not about war or politics, but it is a fascinating record of a philosophical dialogue between the Indo-Greek king Menander and the Buddhist sage Nagasena.
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Narain, A. K. The Indo-Greeks: Revisited and Supplemented. New Delhi: B. R. Publishing, 2003.
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This is a classic book about the Indo-Greeks that cautions against drawing too bold conclusions about the real impact of the Bactrian kings on India. Narain claims that the Bactrian Greeks were descendants of Greek colonists before Alexander’s invasion. Originally published in 1957.
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Tarn, William W. The Greeks in Bactria and India. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010.
DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511707353Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
This is something of a classic, but has several faults and should be read primarily as an inspiring introduction to the subject of the Indo-Greeks. Originally published in 1938.
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Widemann, Francois. “Civil Wars and Alliances in Bactria and North-Western India after the Usurpation of King Eucratides.” East and West 57.1–4 (2007): 9–28.
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Detailed analysis of the complex history of the Greek civil wars in Bactria in the 2nd century BC. Available online for purchase or by subscription.
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The Mahābhārata and the Rāmāyaṇa
The Mahābhārata and the Rāmāyaṇa are timeless classics of world literature. The Mahābhārata is an epic poem of around 100,000 verses in classical Sanskrit that was composed, edited, and reedited over many centuries between 500 BC and 400 AD, or even longer. The verses are divided into eighteen books, or parvans in Sanskrit. Although the Mahābhārata is the most important mythological and religious work in Indian literature, it is not a sacred book. The Vedas are technically revelation, while the Mahābhārata belongs to the class of smriti, i.e., what has been remembered and handed down as opposed to revealed. Moreover, the Mahābhārata is a work of (legendary) history, or itihasa in Sanskrit. It is a vast storehouse of myths and stories where the main narrative theme is the conflict and great war between two groups of cousins, the sons of Dhṛtaraṣṭra (called the Kauravas) and the sons of Paṇḍu (called the Pāṇḍavas), all of whom are descendants of the mythic ancestor, Bharata. For students and scholars interested in ancient Indian warfare, it is a good idea to read extracts from the great work, and one may start by looking at Book 6, Bhīṣma Parvan, of which the famous Bhagavad Gita is a part. This has been translated several times, but the highly accessible and very good translation in the Clay Sanskrit Library (Cherniak 2009) can be recommended. Several important academic expositions of the epic discuss the war as an eschatological conflict at the end of time or as a universal sacrifice. Are expressions like “raṇayajña” to be construed in the literal sense (a war that is a sacrifice) or in a metaphorical sense (a war that is like a sacrifice)? According to Jatavallabhula 1999, we should opt for the literal interpretation and treat the Mahābhārata war as a great sacrifice at a time of crisis. Hiltebeitel is also concerned with the theme. In spite of criticism, both scholars and advanced students should read Hiltebeitel 1976, an edited version of the author’s PhD thesis, and several of his journal articles about the Mahābhārata, but they should also look at reviews of his work. For the scholar and advanced student interested in the mythic characters of the epic, McGrath 2004 will be of interest. To get a glimpse into the Rāmāyaṇa and its warrior ideals, it is a good idea to start by looking at Book 6 (Yuddhakāṇḍa), and Goldman et al. 2009 is recommended. Brockington 1985 should be read by the advanced student as a background to the epic.
Brockington, John L. Righteous Rāma: The Evolution of an Epic. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1985.
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This important book about the Rāmāyaṇa is an argument about the historical evolution of the epic, but it contains a great deal of highly relevant information concerning ideas about war and warfare.
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Cherniak, Alex, trans. Mahābhārata VI: Bhīṣma (Bhīṣmaparvan). 2 vols. Clay Sanskrit Library 37, 47. New York: New York University Press, 2009.
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Following the example of the Loeb Classical Library, this series of texts contains English translations with transliterated Sanskrit on the facing pages. It is a large series with many contributors, and the books are highly readable. The second volume of this work is Volume 47 of the Clay Sanskrit Library series. Available online.
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Goldman, Robert P., Sally J. Sutherland Goldman, and Barend A. van Nooten, trans. The Rāmāyaṇa of Vālmīki: An Epic of Ancient India. Vol. 6, Yuddhakāṇḍa. 2 vols. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009.
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This part of the epic is mostly devoted to intense battle scenes between the hero, Rāma, and his allies and the demon Rāvaṇa and his army.
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Hiltebeitel, Alf. The Ritual of Battle: Krishna in the Mahābhārata. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1976.
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Continuing the approach of Georges Dumézil, Hiltebeitel approaches the Mahābhārata in an Indo-European comparative light.
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Jatavallabhula, Danielle Feller. “Raṇayajña: The Mahābhārata War As a Sacrifice.” In Violence Denied: Violence, Non-violence and the Rationalization of Violence in South Asian Cultural History. Edited by Jan E. M. Houben and Karel R. van Kooij, 69–103. Brill’s Indological library 16. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 1999.
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Jatavallabhula takes on a theme that always has interested scholars of the Mahābhārata: what does it really mean when the great war is described as a sacrifice?
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McGrath, Kevin. The Sanskrit Hero: Karṇa in Epic Mahabharata. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2004.
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Karṇa is a tragic hero in the Mahābhārata, but had received less attention than many other heroes until McGrath’s monograph about him. McGrath claims that Karṇa is the most important and most archaic hero, retaining many of the Aryan warrior ideals.
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Warfare in Early Buddhism and Jainism
One must include the rise of Buddhism and Jainism in the discussion of ancient Indian warfare. It is a common mistake to see Buddhism and Jainism as inherently peaceful religions, and surprisingly many scholars take such an idea for granted without looking into the details of how Buddhist and Jaina ideas, symbols, and institutions have interacted with political institutions and practices through the centuries. In fact, Buddhist and Jaina symbolism and narrative have been employed to give enemies of the state evil qualities. A foreign people, or a minority residing within the borders of a religious state, can be represented as the host of Māra or as threats against a righteous order, a dharmarājya. Schmithausen 1999 and Gethin 2007 are excellent places to start for the student who wants to understand Buddhist attitudes to war. Demiéville 2010 (originally published in French) is chiefly concerned with later Mahayana Buddhism of East Asia. However, it does contain references to early Buddhism and has become a standard point of reference for other studies of Buddhism and war, and it is therefore relevant to students of ancient Indian warfare. For a study of Jain attitudes to war, Dundas 2007 is the natural starting point.
Demiéville, Paul. “Buddhism and War.” In Buddhist Warfare. Edited by Michael K. Jerryson and Mark Juergensmeyer. Translated by Michelle Kendall, 17–57. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195394832.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
This article, originally published in 1957 as “Le bouddhisme et la guerre: Post-scriptum à l’Histoire des moines guerriers du Japon de G. Renondeau,” has become a classic.
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Dundas, Paul. “The Non-violence of Violence: Jain Perspectives on Warfare, Asceticism and Worship.” In Religion and Violence in South Asia: Theory and Practice. Edited by John R. Hinnells and Richard King, 39–58. New York: Routledge, 2007.
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A leading expert on Jainism explains why it makes perfect sense that Jainism, a religion famous for its doctrine of nonviolence, should be a popular religious tradition that appealed to a warrior aristocracy in ancient India.
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Gethin, Rupert. “Buddhist Monks, Buddhist Kings, Buddhist Violence: On the Early Buddhist Attitudes to Violence.” In Religion and Violence in South Asia: Theory and Practice. Edited by John R. Hinnells and Richard King, 59–78. New York: Routledge, 2007.
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Important chapter about early Buddhism and violence.
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Schmithausen, Lambert L. “Aspects of the Buddhist Attitude towards War.” In Violence Denied: Violence, Non-violence and the Rationalization of Violence in South Asian Cultural History. Edited by Jan E. M. Houben and Karel R. van Kooij, 45–67. Brill’s Indological library 16. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 1999.
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Useful short overview of the basic attitude of early Buddhism to war. The author also looks briefly at some of the most important transformations in later Buddhism.