CHAPTER VI

THE HINDUS

In the third quarter of the eighteenth century, by order of Warren Hastings, a committee of Brahmins collected a body of Gentoo (or Hindu) laws from a number of ancient Sanskrit books. These laws were translated into Persian under the superintendence of one of the Brahmins, and the Persian version was translated into English in 1776 by Mr. N. B. Halhed, Bengal Civil Service. In his preface he states that gunpowder had been known in India “far beyond all periods of investigation,” a conclusion arrived at by a method now familiar to the reader: “the word ‘firearms’ is literally in Sanskrit _agni astra_ ... Cannon in the Sanskrit idiom is _shataghni_.”

_Agni_ is found in the Latin _ignis_ = fire; _astra_, Romocki explains, is connected with the Slav _ostr_ = point (of an arrow, &c.); and the compound _agniastra_ is simply a fire-arrow or rocket. In the _shataghni_, or “hundred killer,” we have some weapon described in the exaggerated style usual in early times and by no means confined to India. When Sigurd struck an anvil with his sword Gram, “he cleft it down to the stock thereof;”[231] and “if one smote a mountain” with al-Mahik (the annihilator) the sword of Gharib, “‘twould overthrow it.”[232] There is nothing to connect the _shataghni_ with fire: indeed it seems to have been a mace, for in the “Raghuvansa” the demon is said to have laid his iron-headed shataghni upon Rama, just as Kuvera laid his club on Jamraj.[233] No mention of any projectile discharged by an explosive is to be found in Manu’s “Code of Laws,” and to Manu belongs a passage in the “Code of Gentoo Laws” (p. 53) which either Halhed has mistranslated from the Persian, or the Persian translators have mistranslated from the Sanskrit. Professor Rāy has unearthed the original text of Manu (vii. 90), and gives the correct translation: “The king shall not slay his enemies in battle with deceitful or barbed or poisoned weapons, nor with any having a blade made red hot by fire,[234] or tipped with burning materials.”[235] Halhed’s translation is: “The magistrate shall not make war with any deceitful machine, or with poisoned weapons, or with cannon and guns, or with any other kind of firearms.” Mephistopheles was right:—

“Mit Worten lässt sich trefflich streiten, Mit Worten ein System bereiten.”

Halhed’s mistakes might have been forgotten had they not been revived and elaborated by Professor G. Oppert in an essay “On the Weapons, &c., of the Ancient Hindus,” London, 1880. His argument is briefly this: firearms are clearly mentioned in the “Laws of Manu” and two very ancient Sanskrit poems; therefore at some very remote period the Hindus possessed an explosive which, for whatever reason, fell into disuse eventually.

“Does the passage in Manu refer to firearms or not?” asks Dr. Oppert. “In our opinion it certainly alludes to them” (p. 70). We need not recur to the mistranslation of Manu already noticed.

The two poems on which Dr. Oppert relies for further evidence are the _Nitiprakásika_ of Vaisampayana, and the _Sukraniti_ of Sukra. According to the former, the Hindu deities, Sita, Indra, Krishna, &c., were authors of “books on polity.” Brahma’s contribution to literature consisted of 10,000,000 double verses (p. 36). The constitution of an army was as follows (p. 5):—

Foot 2,187,000,000

Horse 21,870,000

Elephants 218,700

Chariots 21,870

The “arms in use” of one species were forty-four in number; of another species, fifty-five. Rabelais has only succeeded in cataloguing forty-six arms in the introduction to the third book of “Pantagruel.” Lest the ninety-nine arms in use might fail to ensure success, a spell (of thirty-two syllables) is given (p. 10) which would bring certain victory to him who repeated it 32,000 times. Both of these veracious works, however, undoubtedly mention cannon and muskets, and a recipe for gunpowder is given in the _Sukraniti_.[236]

Dr. Oppert makes no critical examination of the texts of these poems to ascertain whether they contain the interpolations to be found in most Oriental works. Of their age he only says that “no Chinese work ... can, with respect to antiquity, be compared with the _Sukraniti_” (p. 45). As the reader will find in the following chapter, this implies a considerable age.

It is hard to believe that gunpowder was known to a people whose language contained no word for saltpetre;[237] that cannon were used by men whose books make no allusion to gunpowder, with the exception just mentioned. “It is peculiar,” says Dr. Oppert, “that powder should not have been mentioned in Sanskrit works” (p. 63). The same peculiarity is observable in Anglo-Saxon works, and is probably due to the same cause. But the fatal objection to the existence of this very early explosive is the admitted fact that after a time it was discarded and forgotten. Writers who lightly tell us so are apparently unconscious of the greatness of the demand they make upon our credulity. They ask us, in effect, to accept the astonishing proposition, that a nation voluntarily surrendered, without any assignable cause, an incalculable “advantage” in the “struggle for existence”—the eager, continuous, and unending preparation for self-defence which is, in Mr. Bagehot’s words, “the most showy fact” in human history. It is infinitely more probable that the passages in the two poems which mention gunpowder and cannon were interpolated by the scribes of after-ages than that the Hindus wantonly broke the first and strongest law of human nature, the law of self-defence. There can be no reasonable doubt that the recipe for gunpowder in the _Sukraniti_ is an interpolation. The proportions are given in the first place as 5:1:1, and then it is added, “if the powder is to be used for a gun,” let them be 4:1:1, or 6:1:1.[238] And why not 5:1:1 also? This recipe was not written by a gunner: it is the handiwork of some charlatan of the sixteenth or seventeenth century, who imagined that, by making a certain mystery about the proportions 5:1:1, he should give a semblance of great antiquity to the recipe. But he blundered badly about the proportions. The proportions 4:1:1 were only reached by the Swedes about the middle of the sixteenth[239] century, and approached by the English about the middle of the seventeenth,[240] and powder of such strength would have blown weak, early bombards to pieces. Other sound reasons are given by competent critics for rejecting from first to last the allusions to firearms contained in the two poems. A critic in _Nature_ points out that a work which mentions the Hunas (Huns or Europeans) cannot be of the age apparently assigned by Dr. Oppert to the _Nitiprakásika_.[241] “Oppert,” says Sir R. Burton, “shows no reason why the allusions to, and descriptions of, gunpowder and firearms should not be held modern interpolations into these absurd compositions.”[242] Mr. W. F. Sinclair concludes from the strong resemblance between the firearms described and those which we know were imported into India during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, either that the MSS. date no further back than the sixteenth century, or that the allusions to firearms were interpolated at that period.[243] “One is naturally led to suspect,” says Professor Ray, “that the lines (of the _Sukraniti_) relating to gunpowder ... are interpolations.” The suspicion is further enhanced when it is borne in mind that in the “Polity of Kamandaki,” an ancient work of undoubted authenticity, “there occurs no reference whatever to firearms, nor is there any in the _Agnipurana_, in which the subject of training in the use of arms and armour takes up four chapters.... The more rational conclusion would be that the _Sukraniti_ is a patchwork, in which portions of chap. iv. were added some time after the introduction of gunpowder in Indian warfare during the Moslem period.”[244] “The last chapter is apparently spurious,” says Rajendralala Mitra, “as it describes guns as they existed a hundred years ago.”[245] Finally, Herr von Romocki utterly rejects Dr. Oppert’s theory.[246]

The military history of India confirms the conclusions of the writers who have been quoted: not a fact is to be found there which lends any support to the theory of early gunpowder in India.

The employment of gunpowder in Europe revolutionised the art of war and affected, more or less, almost every human institution. “The military art,” says Gibbon, “has been changed by the invention of gunpowder.... Mathematics, chymistry, mechanics, architecture, have been applied to the science of war.”[247] Gunpowder, says A. Comte, “en emprimant à l’art de la guerre un caractère de plus en plus scientifique, a directement tendu à intéresser tous les pouvoirs à l’actif dévellopement continu de la philosophie naturelle.”[248] We may reasonably assume that the discovery of so tremendous an agent as gunpowder would have produced in India some few effects, at least, similar in their general features to the effects it produced in Europe. To mention one or two details: Sanskrit would have coined a word for saltpetre, which it did not possess; the use of the bow would have been curtailed; a lasting mark would have been put on fortifications; and some few specimens of the early firearms might have survived. Not a trace of these or similar changes is to be found; not a vestige of early firearms has remained. General Cunningham thought that the state of the ruins of certain ancient Kashmir temples proves the use of an explosive in their destruction,[249] but more prolonged observation shows that their condition is chiefly the effect of natural agencies. “The fingers of Time, and moderate movements of the earth, have been making openings in some of the other old Hindu buildings in Kashmir,” such as the little temple of Payach and the splendid temple of Martand; “and from their appearance it may be believed that these same agencies, together with undermining work applied for wilful destruction, could do what has been done.”[250] The plentiful supply of saltpetre to be found in the valley of the Ganges has been brought forward as a proof that the ancient Hindus must have had gunpowder, but the fact proves nothing. How many centuries did coal lie within reach of man’s hand, in England and elsewhere, before it was discovered and made use of? The attractive property of the magnet was known to Plato in the fifth century B.C., and Lucretius in the first century B.C. devotes a long passage of his poem to it (vi. 909-1089); yet its property of pointing north and south when free to move horizontally is first distinctly mentioned (in Europe) in the twelfth century A.D.[251]

Early Indian gunpowder is a fiction.

The first gunpowder and firearms used in India were neither invented nor manufactured by the Hindus: they were imported during the Middle Ages from the West. The guns of Upper India entered through Afghanistan; those of Western India were brought by ships. Let us consider the latter first.

“If any reliance is to be placed on Moulla Daud Bidury, the author of _Tohfutu-s Salutin_,” says General Briggs, “guns were used (in 1368) by the Hindus (of Bijanagar), and in a subsequent passage (Ferishta remarks) that the Muhammadans used them for the first time during the next campaign. But I am disposed to doubt the validity of both these statements.... Ferishta ... also observes that Turks and Europeans skilled in gunnery worked the artillery. That guns were in common use before the arrival of the Portuguese in India in 1498, seems certain from the mention of Faria y Sousa.”[252]

The first observation suggested by this passage is, that Ferishta does not say the Hindus had _guns_ on this occasion; he says they had عرابه (_’arábah_),[253] a word which originally meant a _cart_. In the early days of field artillery the guns were carried in carts,[254] from which they were taken and laid on trestles when required for use. Wheeled gun-carriages only came into general use in Europe during the reign of Louis XI. of France (1461-83).[255] Things followed the same course in India, and the word ’arába thus came in time to have two meanings; most arába being simply carts, some being (so to speak) gun-carriages. Then later writers arose who insisted that all ’arába were gun-carriages at the early date of 1368, because _some_ ’arába were gun-carriages in and after 1526. Ferishta (who died about 1611) fell into the trap, and after him fell several modern historians.

Secondly, General Briggs’ conclusion about guns in India before 1498 seems somewhat unguarded. It is beyond dispute that firearms were used on the west coast of India during the last quarter of the fifteenth century, but the evidence we possess points to the conclusion that they belonged almost exclusively to Arab and Portuguese ships. The fact that Captain Cook cruised on the coast of Otaheite in 1769 in a ship equipped with firearms, does not warrant the conclusion that the natives possessed firearms. Ferishta was writing about events which took place two hundred years before he was born, and there is a particular reason for doubting the existence of firearms in Bijanagar at this early period.

In 1441 ’Abd ur-Razzak, who had been sent to India by Shah Rukh on an embassy to Calicut, visited Bijanagar, whose ruins may still be seen on the banks of the Tumbhadra. He has given us a full and amusing account of what he saw, bursting forth into poetry on the ugliness of the natives:—

“I have loved a moon-faced beauty, But I cannot fall in love with every black woman.”[256]

He was present at the great review held during the festival of Mahanawi, when “the number of people and the huge elephants resembled the green sea and the myriads which will appear on the Plains of the Resurrection.” Not an allusion is made to firearms, although he notices the naphtha-throwers mounted on elephants.[257]

Ferishta tells us that in the year 887 A.H. (A.D. 1482), Mahmoud Shah Begurra of Gujarat, hearing that Cambay was likely to be raided by the pirates of Bulsar, collected a fleet containing “a force of gunners, musketeers, and archers,” and defeated them. On this passage General Briggs remarks: “This is the first mention of artillery and musketry in the Gujarat history. They were probably introduced by the Arabs and Turks from the Red Sea and Persian Gulf.”[258] The firearms that came from the Persian Gulf must have been few and far between. Writing in 1549, a Jesuit says: “The Persians use no bombards or arms of this kind.”[259]

There is no mention of the Bulsar expedition in the “History of Gujarat,” by Ali Muhammad Khan, translated by Mr. J. Bird.

The _Mirat-i Sikandari_, a history of Gujarat translated by Sir E. C. Bayley, speaks of an attack made by Mahmoud on certain pirates as early as 878 A.H. (A.D. 1473), but neither Bulsar nor firearms are mentioned. We are told, however, that during a previous expedition in the same year against the island of Sankhodhar, the infidels (Hindus) “resisted bravely and kept up a sustained discharge of arrows and muskets” (pp. 198-9).

Ferishta relates that during the siege of Champanir, 1484, a shell (_hookah_) fell on the Rajah’s palace; but he does not state how it was discharged, nor whether it was explosive or incendiary.[260]

On landing at Calicut in 1498, Vasco da Gama and his followers were led through the streets with tomtoms beating, and from time to time an _espingarda_, or musket, was fired off.[261] The town seems to have possessed only one of these weapons. At least, the soldiers of the guard who mounted over Gama after he had been arrested were not armed with espingardas, but with swords, daggers, and bows,[262] and no mention is made of there being any cannon in the town.

In 1502 a sea-fight took place in these waters between a Portuguese man-of-war and a Moorish (Arab) ship, during which the Arab bore down on the Portuguese, “pouring in her shot, and then made away.”[263] The original says: “Una nube de flechas sobre nuestra gente y algunas balas;” _i.e._ a cloud of arrows and some balls.[264] These balls were undoubtedly cannon balls.

It is stated in MSS. 826-8, _Bib. Nat._, Paris, that in 917 A.H. (A.D. 1511-12) Modhaffer Shah of Gujarat sent to Kansuh, King of Egypt, asking him for arms and cannon to enable the Gujaratis to defend themselves against the Europeans; “the people of India not having hitherto possessed Artillery of any kind.”[265] In answer to this request, Hossain was sent to sea in command of a considerable fleet. If Mahmoud possessed ships with guns in 1482, how came it that in 1511 the Gujaratis were sending round the world begging for firearms? Had Mahmoud merely hired for the occasion from the Arabs the ships and guns with which he crushed the Bulsar pirates? It is impossible to say categorically; but two facts may be extracted from the foregoing conflicting statements—first, that firearms were used by Arab and Portuguese ships on the west coast of India before the Hindus possessed them, and secondly, that there was an espingarda in the town of Calicut in 1498.

Whatever doubt there may be about the exact date at which the natives of Western India first procured firearms from the foreign ships which visited their shores, there can be none about the first employment of artillery in Upper India.

As has been already stated, the machines of the Greeks were adopted at an early period by the Persians, from whom they were eventually borrowed by the Arabs, Mughals, &c. The Hindus in turn adopted the machines they saw employed by their invaders and named them, according to their custom, after the part of the world they came from—_maghribíha_ = _western_ (machines or manjaník). At the abortive attack on Rantambhor, 1290, Sultan Jalalu-d Din ordered Westerns to be erected.[266] The Hindus had collected materials for making incendiaries before being besieged in the same fortress by Sultan Alau-d Din in 1300. “Every day the fire of those infernals fell on the light of the Moslems, and, as there were no means of extinguishing it, they filled bags with clay and prepared entrenchments.... The Royal Westerns shot large earthen balls against that infidel fort.... The stones from the ballistas and catapults within and without the fort encountered each other half-way and emitted lightening.”[267] During the attack on Arangal, 1309, the Westerns “were played on both sides and many were wounded.”[268] The mud walls were so strong and elastic that the balls of the Westerns rebounded off them “like nuts which children play with.”[269] Eventually the “western stone-balls” formed a breach and the fort fell. Such is the account given by Amir Khusru who died in 1315, of whom Sir H. M. Elliot says (vi. 465):—“He is full of illustrations and leaves no manner of doubt that nothing like gunpowder was known to him.” Near the close of the century, 1398-9, the Hindus besieged by Timur in Bhatnir “cast down in showers arrows and stones and fireworks upon the heads of the assailants.”[270] At the attack on Chanderi, 1527-8, “the Pagans exerted themselves to the utmost, hurling down stones and throwing flaming substances on the heads” of Babar’s troops.[271] In 1528-9, the Hindus succeeded in igniting with “fireworks, turpentine, and other combustibles” some hay which the Mughals had collected in the fort of Lucknow. The heat became so intolerable that the Mughals retired and the fort was taken.[272]

It is needless to enlarge the list of quotations: incendiaries pursued much the same course in Upper India as in Greece and Arabia. No reliable evidence of an explosive is to be found until the 21st April 1526, the date of the decisive battle of Panipat, in which Ibrahim, Sultan of Delhi, was killed and his army routed by Babar, the Mughal, who possessed firearms great and small.[273]

On the introduction of Artillery the word _maghribiha_ was gradually replaced by the more definite word _feringiha_ = European. At Panipat the Artillery of the left centre was commanded by Mustapha Rumi, whose name is sufficient proof of his western origin. But traces of European artisans are to be found long before this. When the King of Gor crossed the Attok in the twelfth century, he had with him “skilful Franks, learned in all the arts.”[274] The success of the attack on Chitor in 1591, by Buhadur, Sultan of Gujarat, was chiefly due to his engineer, Labri Khan of Frengan = Frangistan, the country of the Franks.[275] Speaking of the Mughal Artillery in 1695, Dr. Careri tells us that it was “all, especially the heavy Artillery, under the direction of Franks, or Christian gunners, who had extraordinary pay.”[276]

Haidar Mirza gives us one or two details about Babar’s guns which deserve a passing notice.[277] There was a _zarb-zan_, or swivel gun, carrying a ball of 500 _miskals_, and a heavier gun throwing a “brass” ball which weighed 5000 _miskals_, and cost 200 _miskals_ of silver. The former was drawn by four, the latter by eight pairs of bullocks. Let us adopt the weight of the _miskal_ given in Steingass’ “Persian Dictionary,”—1-3/7 drachms = 39.045 grs. troy, which makes the weight of Babar’s large ball 34 lbs. nearly.[278] Its price, 200 _miskals_, would then be 7809 grs. troy of pure (silver), or (since our standard shilling is 87.27 grs. troy and its fineness 37/40) 96.7 shillings of our present money. The price of a 10.18 lbs. ball of the same material would consequently be 29s., including the cost of manufacture. The price of the English 4” bronze ball of 10.18 lbs. given here in Table X., is 26.468d., or about 22s. of our present money, exclusive of the cost of manufacture. Adding 7s. to cover the cost of manufacture,[279] its price would be about 29s. The value of the alloy in our shilling has been neglected here, and Queen Elizabeth’s money may not have been worth exactly seven times our money; but making full allowance for both these errors, the prices of the two balls approximate as closely as can be reasonably expected.

Gunpowder was not invented by the Hindus: its discovery by them would have fallen little short of a miracle. The extinction of Buddhism about the ninth century A.D., and the consequent establishment of a dominant priestly class, were a deathblow to the cultivation of physical science. By the seemingly innocent institution of _caste_, the Brahmins succeeded in trampling science in the dust. One caste was not permitted to touch this, another caste could not touch that substance; and the higher the caste, the greater the number of forbidden objects. The study of experimental science was consequently thrown back upon the lowest and poorest classes, who had neither the means, the leisure, nor the inclination to pursue it. Thus “the spirit of inquiry gradually died out,” says a Hindu Professor of Chemistry, “and the name of India was all but expunged from the map of the scientific world.”[280]