When we total up the list given by Nuniz of the columns that marched from Vijayanagar for the campaign,the amount is so huge that we pause in natural doubt as to whether the story could by any possibility be true:703,000foot,32,600horse,and 551elephants,BESIDES the camp followers,merchants,&c.,and "an infinitude of people"who joined him at a place close to Raichur!It certainly demands a large strain on our credulity.
Let every one form his own opinion.I can only call attention to the fact that large armies seem to have always been the rule in India,and that certainly Krishna Raya had the power to raise immense numbers of troops,[236]though whether so many as is stated is another question.His power to do so lay in his mode of government.Allusion has already been made to this,and Nuniz gives us interesting details.The whole empire was divided into provinces and estates,held by chiefs bound to keep up masses of troops fit for immediate service.It is,of course,natural to suppose that in this great war the king would have put forth all his strength.
To prove that immense armies were often employed by Indian kings,we have only to refer to a succession of writers.Barros notes the great power of the sovereign of Vijayanagar and his almost incredible richness,and is at pains to give an account of how these enormous forces were raised,"lest his tale should not be believed."In the second volume of Scott's "History of the Dekhan,"a translation is given of a journal kept by a Bondela officer in the reign of Aurangzib,an officer who served under "Dulput Roy"in A.D.1690.Writing about Vijayanagar in former days,at the height of its grandeur and importance,he says,"They kept an army of 30,000horse,a million of infantry,and their wealth was beyond enumeration."Conti,who was in India about a century earlier than the war in question,told Bracciolini that the Vijayanagar army consisted of "a million of men and upwards."Abdur Razzak (1442A.D.)tells the same story,putting the number at 1,100,000with 1000elephants.
Twenty years later Nikitin states that the Kulbarga forces marching to attack the Hindus amounted to 900,000foot,190,000horse,and 575elephants.
The Sultan himself,independently of his nobles,took the field with 300,000men,and even when he only went out on a hunting expedition he took with him a train of 10,000horse,500,000foot,and 200elephants.He states that the Malik ul Tujar alone had an army of 200,000employed in the siege of one city.The Hindus fought almost nude,and were armed with shield and sword.
Even so far back as the time of Alexander the Great (about B.C.320)the army of Magadha was computed by the Greeks as consisting of 600,000foot.30,000cavalry,and 9000elephants,though Quintus Curtius makes a much more modest estimate.
Lord Egerton of Tatton states[237]that an army of Hindu confederated states,mustered for the defence of Northern indict against the Muhammadan invasion in 1192A.D.,amounted,"according to the most moderate estimate,"to 300,000horse,3000elephants,and a great number of infantry.
In A.D.1259a Mogul embassy was received at Delhi by an escort of 50,000horse,and was led past lines of infantry numbering as many as 200,000in their ranks.
It will be remembered how Muhammad Taghlaq of Delhi[238]raised,according to Firishtah,an army of 370,000men for the conquest of Persia,and when he wanted to destroy the inhabitants of a certain tract of country,he "ordered out his army as if he were going hunting,"surrounded the tract,and then,pressing inwards towards the centre,slaughtered all the inhabitants therein.This implies that he took,when merely hunting,immense numbers of men with him.Shahab-ud-Din,indeed,declared that Muhammad Taghlaq had an army of 900,000horse;[239]and Nuniz,on the opening page of his chronicle,says that this Sultan invaded the Balaghat with 800,000horse.[240]
This estimate was,of course,only according to the tradition extant in 1535.
Faria y Souza,writing in the seventeenth century,estimated the forces of Bahadur,king of Cambay,in 1534,as 100,000horse,415,000foot,and 600elephants.
As late as 1762the Mahrattas are said to have had an army of 100,000horse.
Nuniz[241]gives details of the provincial forces of Vijayanagar,compulsorily maintained by eleven out of a total of two hundred nobles amongst whom the empire was divided,and the total of the forces of these eleven amounts to 19,000horse,171,700foot,and 633elephants.
Castanheda confirms other writers in this matter,stating that the infantry of Vijayanagar were countless,the country being of large extent and thickly populated,so that the king could call upon a million,or even two millions,of men at will.[242]This writer visited India just at the close of the reign of Krishna Deva Raya.He states that the king kept up at his own cost an establishment of 100,000horses and 4000elephants.
As to all this,I repeat that every one is at liberty to form his own opinion;but at least it seems certain that all the chroniclers believed that the king of Vijayanagar could,if he so desired,put into the field immense masses of armed men.They were probably not all well armed,or well trained,or well disciplined,but as to large numbers there can be little reasonable doubt.A relic of this may be seen every year at modern Haidarabad,the capital city of H.H.the Nizam,where,at the annual festival known as the "Langar,"armed irregulars in very large numbers file through the principal streets.They are for the most part a mere mob of men with weapons,and are not maintained as State troops,but they are brought up by the various nobles in separate bodies,each chief mustering for the occasion all his hereditary retainers and forming them into rough regiments and brigades.
