Thursday 30 June 2016

New venture.

Hello everyone! It gives me immense pleasure to be back after more than two years. This time, Wandjinns is going to immerse itself in some spheres of life one cannot do without: like food. Hence this post to announce the latest page. It is going to be dedicated to photographs, events, and histories related to food. With a little help from friends, Wandjinns shall be enriched. For now, here is a teaser of what one can expect in the next few days.



Photographs by Madhumita Chatterjee
Keep watching this space for more!

Wednesday 3 December 2014

Alexandria at Patna? A Counterfactual Perspective.

Towards the close of spring in the year 327B.C.E, Alexander the Great led an army of 75,000 across the lofty Khawak and Khaoshan passes of the Hindukush, in the Kabul valley.[1] Defeating the republican peoples of the ‘ponchanadas’, Alexander met Porus in the battle of Hydaspes (326 B.C.E) throughly defeating him. He moved further east defeating the Agalassoi, the Malavas, the Kshudrakas and reached the Beas when his world conquering army revolted. They had started with Alexander in 334 B.C.E and many hadn’t seen their families since then. In the words of Koinos, their spokesman “… a few out of many survive, and those few possess no longer the same bodily strength as before, while their spirits are still more depressed. You see yourself how many Macedonians and Greeks started with you and how few of us are left.”[2] Besides this another reason has been attributed to the depression of the Macedonian troops and that was the awe, fear generated by the enormous wealth, army of the ‘king of the Gangaridae, and the Prasii’ who was ‘Augrasainya’ of the Sanskrit sources and ‘Agrammes’ of the classical accounts. He is reported to possess a huge army of 200,000 infantry, 20,000 cavalry 2,000 four-wheeled chariots and 3,000 elephants by Curtius Rufus but Diodorus and Plutarch raise the figure of elephants to 4,000 and 6,000 respective. This essay provides a counterfactual perspective where Alexander wouldn’t have turned back from the Beas, but he would enter the Gangetic plains, fight Agrammes in a pitched battle thoroughly defeating him and extending his realm even into the Gangetic plain thereby equating himself with his legendary ancestors Dionysus and Hercules.                                                                                                                           

 

ACHILLES against RAMA

The Chaturanga-Bala dominated sub continental warfare between 600 B.C.E and 300 C.E. It was the result of Military Revolutions in the sub-continent since the Vedic age. The war-chariots, its principal component, originated in Mesopotamia around 1500B.C.E and disseminated throughout the entire Near-East, Egypt, Greece, India and China by 1200B.C.E. The words ‘Rathin’ or ‘Rathistha’ occurs frequently in the early Vedic literature.
The great ‘Mahabharata War’ was principally a war of charioteers, a heroic warfare between leaders of opposite clans and tribes. This ‘dvandvayuddha’ or individual duels was replaced by Inter-state warfare by 500B.C.E. [3] The second important component was the cavalry. The Assyrians (900-612B.C.E) were the first to use cavalry as an important arm in battle.[4] In the subcontinent Cavalry came with the Aryans but in the Mahabharata war it played a secondary role mainly.                                                                                                          The next component was an Indian contribution to warfare, that of war elephants. Elephants were the ‘corps de elite’ of the Chaturanga Bala[5]. Kautilya emphatically declares that “the victory of kings in battles depends upon elephants...” [6] The last and the weakest component was the Infantry. Both the Nandas as well as the Mauryas possessed huge figures of Infantry (200,000 and  600,000 ) as shown by Diodorus and in the Arthasashtra respectively. But they were not as effective as in Greece, where Infantry won battles.
The army of Philip and Alexander was the product of an amalgamation of two distinct military traditions that developed parallely in Greece and Persia.The core of Philip’s army consisted of Hoplites, but they were armed differently from their classical predecessors. Instead of the regular six-eight feet long spear, the hoplites of Philip were armed with sarissa , which was around 13 feet long[7].They presented a bristling, impregnable formation to obstruct the enemy cavalry and to pin down the enemy infantry, while the Macedonian cavalry did its job. The premier arm of the Macedonian army was the cavalry. The Macedonian king fought on a horse and the elite cavalry were organized as the King’s companions. Macedonian cavalry squadrons were armed with the cavalry ‘sarissa’ (9 feet) which had iron heads on both ends. Besides this they also had an elite corps of heavy infantry, the Hypaspists, the peltasts (light infantry) and also skirmishers. This combined with the Scythian Mounted archers was the strongest military machine of the ancient world. Alexander also possessed state-of- the- art Siege technology. The Nandas however couldn’t risk a siege. The dried clay brick walls would be too easy for someone who had successfully besieged Tyre, an Island city. Nor could Agrammes risk a Guerrilla war as the light infantry was highly specialized in it and had successfully subdued the tribes of Bactria, Sogdiana and Eastern Iran where both tradition and terrain favoured a ‘klienkreig’.The only chance of Agrammes was to fight a pitched battle and hurl his huge beasts against the Macedonian army.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          
THE FACE OF BATTLE                                                                                Agrammes like DariusIII was an emperor,the ekarat of Gangaridae and Prasii,the commander of a huge armed force. However being a descendant of a base born,an usurper he was highly unpopular in his own realm[8]. It is said that he hoarded and amassed a huge fortune which he hid ‘in the floods of the Ganges.’[9] Realizing his unpopularity he started charity through an institution named ‘Danasala’ where Kautilya was made the incharge,which later proved to be the bone of contention between them. Chandragupta Maurya had in fact visited Alexander and proposed a joint crusade against the Nandas.
STRATEGY: The Battle at Hydaspes had been fought around May, and when Alexander reached the Beas the monsoon was in full fervour[10]. Alexander would not have favoured it in monsoon as it made river crossing very dangerous and weakened the mounted archers as the composite bow would be less effective in monsoon. It would also be difficult for the heavy infantry. So Alexander would probably wait till the end of the wet season and in between recruit new forces, know the terrain and would provoke Agrammes to meet him in upper Gangetic plains by conducting short raids in the frontier towns of the Nanda Kingdom. Already unpopular, Agrammes couldn’t afford to sit tight at Pataliputra while Alexander ravaged his kingdom. The segmented nature of the polity also meant that the kings of the Uttarapatha and the Gangetic plains could not unite against Greek invasion in a united fight for independence. People detested the Nandas as much as Alexander.
TACTICS: It would be a war of Alexander’s cavalry against the Indian elephants. Alexander had himself around 200 elephants captured from the various republican tribes of the ‘Ponchanadas’, from Porus, as well as gifts. But he didn’t use them at Hydaspes, as he had to cross the river[11]. In this case he could have placed them as reserve as his last resort, in case his cavalry was routed by the Indian elephants, the elephants would be brought in battle to win time, to regroup and attack just as Seleucus had done at the Battle of Ipsus (310 B.C.E) where his elephants were placed at the rear and successfully prevented the cavalry of Demetrius to wheel round and attack the rear of his infantry. Alexander’s tactic would be to create a gap between the elephants so that his Heavy companion cavalry could penetrate the ranks of the massed Indian infantry and create havoc. The task of harassing the elephants, the chariots would be placed on the Mounted archers while his Heavy infantry would pin down their Indian counterparts.             
                                                                                                                                                                 COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF THE TWO ARMIES 
INFANTRY: Diodorus tells us that the Nandas had an infantry that numbered around 200,000.[12]This figure though intimidating might not be greatly exaggerated as Agrammes was the king of the fertile gangetic plains that supported a huge population. Moreover on looking at the figure of the armies of the Ponchanadas that Alexander had defeated, the figure doesn’t seem improbable at all. On the other hand Alexander entered India with an army of 75,000 but at Hydaspes he fielded only 15,000 infantry and 6,000 cavalry. When he would go out to meet Agrammes, his army would be swollen with new recruits from his allies namely Porus, Ambhi. He could probably field around 50,000 infantry which however would be badly outnumbered by 4:1.But the Hoplites had proved its supremacy over other infantries at Marathon, at Thermopylae where a mere 300 held back the  200,000 strong Persian army for 3 days. Even at Gaugamela Alexander had successfully fielded only 40,000 infantry against Darius’s 200,000. At Hydaspes Alexander’s infantry numbered only half of Porus’s. So the Indian Infantry,the weakest of the Chaturanga –Bala would not stand ground against the elite Heavy Infantry of Alexander as it was both technologically and organizationally inferior to the Greek phalangites. The Indians carried broad swords but they would not get any chance to use them on the Greeks as they would be finished off by the long sarissa. To make things worse they wore little or no armour and worst of all they were ill-coordinated, less disciplined as was evident as Hydaspes.  Some of them yielded Long-bows that were 5 feet long. These bows had to be pressed with the left feet before firing. But the infantry archers were vulnerable as though their shots were very dangerous which no armour could protect, the sheer length, weight and the thrust required for every shot would naturally mean longer reloading time, than the composite bows yielded by Alexander’s mounted archers  becoming easy targets for Macedonian cavalry.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 
CAVALRY AND CHARIOTS : According to both Diodorus and Plutarch, the field cavalry of Agrammes amounted to 20,000 in number, while the figure of the chariots was around 2000.These were four-horsed and carried six men : two archers, two shield bearers and two charioteers who were also combatants armed with darts. These were probably fitted with long knives just as the Scythe chariots of Darius. Such Scythe chariots were developed under Ajatashatru around 500 B.C.E and played an important role in establishing Magadhan hegemony.[13]According to the offence-defence inventive cycle, security is inversely proportional to mobility and firepower. So these heavy chariots were less mobile. Moreover at Gaugamela, Alexander’s infantry had adopted a technique to nullify the Scythe chariots.[14] These chariots were simply allowed to pass by opening a channel in the Infantry and then finished off by the Peltasts. A similar tactic would be followed against the Nandas. Infact the chariots had become obsolete but the time of Alexander. Rain or no rain the archers in the Rathas were vulnerable to the armoured Greek cavalry and the Mounted archers. Now regarding cavalry, the Indians were technologically backward than their foes. Unlike the Companions, the Indian horsemen were not equipped with metal greaves, shields and helmets. Alexander’s companion cavalry wielded double edged lances that were very effective in all the battles that he fought, in Granicus, Issus, Gaugamela and also at Hydaspes.In addition the Companions had the advantage of superior discipline and were battle hardy compared to the one of the weaker components of the Chaturanga-Bala.                                             
ELEPHANTS : According to Diodorus, Agrammes had around 2,000 elephants, while Curtius puts it to 3,000.There is good reason to think that this figure of 2,000 or 3,000 was exaggerated and even if it is rational the figure included Pack elephants.[15].Moreover 2,000 or 3,000 elephants could not be used in a battle. If we remember Hydaspes, we will see that the elephants of Porus were stationed 50 feet from each other and that extended his battle line around 2 miles. So even if Agrammes fielded 500 elephants it would extend his line to around 10 miles! So if we think rationally the Nanda King could max out no more than 200 to 250 elephants.   Even then the huge beasts with its trumpeting would have turned on the heat against the Macedonians. Now, the Indian Elephants carried 2- 4 men including the Mahout, who were mostly archers. The Mahout had an ankusha which was thrust in the elephant’s neck in case it became uncontrollable. It was this feature of the elephants that made them dangerous equally for friends and enemies.
At Hydaspes, after the initial casualties inflicted by them, the elephants were tied down in a close space with arrows, javelins were rained which made them uncontrollable and they crushed many of the Indian Infantrymen. The same tactic could be repeated. Alexander leading his right flank could easily push back the Indian left and turn around to attack the elephants in the rear, while his Mounted Archers could perform the Double-envelopment tactic, driving the elephants mad creating a great confusion in the Indian-ranks, taking advantage of which the Heavy Infantry would render the final blow In a classic Hammer and Anvil move. Infact Chandragupta’s revolutionary movement to uproot the unpopular ‘Agrammes’ culminated in a decisive battle where there was killing of biblical proportions. Kautilya mentions the sources of the recruitment for Chandragupta’s army: Choras, Chora-Ganas, Mlechchha, Atavikas (the foresters), Sastropajivisrenis (warrior clans). [16]Interestingly, the word choras or choragana actually meant mercenaries which the Punjab region was full off and the people of these regions actually did this for a profession. Interestingly the Punjab was predominantly a region of horses. In fact, the republican people whom Alexander fought had huge infantry and cavalry but few elephants. To take the example of the Assakenians their army comprised of 30,000 cavalry 38,000 infantry but only 30 elephants. The combined army of the Kshudrakas and the Malavas comprised of 90,000 foot, 10,000 horse and 900 chariots but no elephants[17].Chandragupta’s success over the Magadha war Machine of which the elephants were the corps de-elite demonstrates the superiority of mobility over the tanks of antiquity.                                                                                                                                     
AFTERMATH                                                                
Alexander would have probably founded Alexandria at the erstwhile capital of the Nandas thus equalling his glory with that of Dionysus and Hercules. Alexander would have probably wanted to press on reach the ‘southern ocean’ but his battle tired army would now surely mutiny on any thought of crossing the Ganges. Moreover the summer season would be due shortly and the paucity of grasses would be render his horses ineffective. Alexander’s huge empire now embracing most of Asia would be exactly like the raw hide skin of the Indian sage whose one corner would move up if another corner was moved down. As said before Alexander was equally hated as the Nanda King for his massacres of the republican tribes that had dared to oppose him. In fac,t shortly after Alexander left for Persepolis, the Greek satrap  Nicanor was killed and rebellion broke out at Kandahar and other parts of the Ponchanadas. Time would be ripe for the emergence of the Indian hero, Chandragupta Maurya who would defeat the weakened Greek rule as he defeated Selucas in 301B.C.E and would lay the foundation of the Mauryan empire.


[1] -  Arther Ferrill, The Origins Of  War From  The Stone Age To Alexander The Great.         
[2]     R.K.Mookherjii, Chandragupta Maurya and His Times
[3]  Kaushik Roy, From Hydaspes To Kargil, A  History Of  Warfare in India from 326 BC To 1999 A.D
[4]  Arther Ferrill, The Origins Of  War From The Stone Age To Alexander The Great
[5]  B.P. Sinha’s The Art of War in Ancient India(600 B.C- AD 300) in Kaushik Roy ed. Warfare,State and Society in South Asia(500 BCE-2005 CE)
[6]  Osprey New Vanguard, War Elephants,  Dr. Konstantin Nossov.
[7]  Arther Ferrill, The Origins Of  War From The Stone Age To Alexander The Great
[8]    The Classical,Jain,and the Brahmanaical Sources are unanimous in this regard. For all the arguments see  H.C.Raychauduri,Political History Of Ancient India
[9]    R.K.Mookherjii, Chandragupta Maurya and His  Times
[10]  A.B. Bosworth, Conquest and Empire , The Reign  of Alexander The Great.
[11]  Osprey New Vanguard, War Elephants,Dr. Konstantin Nossov
[12]   R.K.Mookherjii, Chandragupta Maurya and His Times.
[13]    Kaushik Roy, From Hydaspes To Kargil, A  History Of  Warfare in India from 326 BC to AD 1999
[14]   Arther Ferrill, The Origins Of  War From The Stone Age To Alexander The Great.
[15] Osprey New Vanguard, War Elephants,Dr. Konstantin Nossov.
[16]  H.C.Raychauduri,Political History Of Ancient India
[17] Ibid

Thursday 30 May 2013

Of letters and last scenes.

It's been raining for days now in Calcutta. The weatherman reports depression over the Bay of Bengal. Today dawned like no other. The cool breeze entering through my window made me draw on the blanket over my lazy legs. That was when I heard my father exclaim: Rituporno Ghosh is no more. The news felt like a dull thud. The news channels kept on repeating his voice, his images, his achievements: like they do every time a star expired. Then the statuses and the tweets, making the news of his death veritable.
 The *radical* director of *parallel* Bengali cinema understood the language of relationships like no other. I am no critique to talk at length regarding his craft. The twelve National Awards and several International ones are also no yardsticks to measure his genius. And it would be quite foolish to debate over his cinema being the crowd-puller once again, post-Ray. Because they were.Period. He was the one to provoke the *moddhyobitto Bangali* sentiments all over again. Thanks to him, the *arty*, the *snooty*and the anglicized bought first day,first show tickets, queued outside standalones and multiplexes and came out praising the sensitive and brave script.
Perhaps he handled loneliness like no other because he himself experienced loneliness like no other. The letter which Romita writes to her elder sister in the last scene of Dahan used to haunt me as a child. It still does. More so because, perhaps we are all lonely at some point in life.


Tuesday 28 May 2013

A droopy-eyed post. (What?It's 1.26 am already.)

Yep,so I'm extremely enthused to have this blog. Yay,finally! Oh,and this also belongs to +Dipanjan Mazumder. Which means he'll be posting on most days.
And no, we didn't create this because we were/are bored (which  we are, but that's a different story.). We created this because we wanted to. Because it's still pretty *cool* to have one. Which reminds me, I didn't update my blog for a really, really long time. And also because Dip really wanted to own one. Jointly at that. :-)

So there!
And, 'night. Seriously.