Kalaha, Vigraha and Yuddha in Ancient India: Circa 500 BCE- Circa 650 CE

ABSTRACT

The present essay argues that the ancient Hindu acharyas (teachers) and rulers came up with nuanced and complex theories and techniques of COIN. This was because the multi-religious and polyethnic agrarian bureaucratic empires of ancient India faced a multitude of armed insurrections. The essay shows that the Hindu theorists and emperors of ancient India had hit upon the policy of winning the hearts and minds of the people in the disturbed areas through initiation of large-scale welfare measures backed by coercive force. Further, the policy of dhamma buttressed the welfare centric COIN of the ancient Indian rulers.

KEYWORDS:

• Insurgency
• Maurya empire
• dhamma
• Hindu
• Hinduism
• caste
• Kautilya
• COIN

Acknowledgments

Thanks to the editor and the referees for their comments on an earlier version of this paper. I am grateful to my researchers Mr. Aryama Ghosh and Ms. Sohini Mitra for helping me with some of the sources.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Howe and Brice (eds.), Brill’s Companion to Insurgency and Terrorism in the Ancient Mediterranean.

2. See the articles in Small Wars & Insurgencies 31, no. 5 (2020): 931–1107 and especially Osborne, “The Ulcer of the Mughal Empire: Mughals and Marathas, 1680–1707.” 988–1009.

3. Heuser, “Introduction: Exploring the Jungle of Terminology”, 5–17.

4. Dikshitar, Mauryan Polity, 8–39; Habib and Thakur, Vedic Age, 1–50.

5. King, Governance, and Law, 1–50.

6. For the debate regarding authorship and dating of Sun Tzu’s work, see The Art of War, Mair, 1–75.

7. My view is similar to that of Jha. See Jha, Early India, 96–7.

8. Boesche, Kautilya.

9. Mohanty, Reason and Tradition, 290, 294.

10. Quoted from Kautilya, Arthashastra, by Rangarajan, 519.

11. Roy, “Hinduism”, 487–508.

12. Roy, “Kautilya on COIN”, 61–70.

13. Not all the Sanskrit experts would agree with my interpretations of terms like yuddha, vigraha and kalaha.

14. Negi, Indological Studies, vol. 1, 12–57.

15. Callwell, Small Wars.

16. Whittingham, Callwell, 58–60.

17. Satterfield, Princes, Posts and Partisans.

18. Raychaudhuri, “India in the Age of the Nandas”, 10–17.

19. Sastri, “Alexander’s Campaigns in India”, 57–64.

20. Thapar, Mauryas Revisited, 5.

21. Prakash, History of Poros, 7–14.

22. Sastri, “India in Early Greek and Latin Literature”, 82–5.

23. Kangle, Arthashastra, Part 3, 245–46.

24. Trautmann, Arthashastra, 14–5.

25. Habib, The Agrarian System of Mughal India.

26. Mookerji, Chandragupta Maurya, 31–6.

27. Majumdar, The Military System in Ancient India, 54.

28. Smith, The Early History of India, 124–26; Sharma, India’s Ancient Past, 181; Guha, Health and Population in South Asia, 30–31.

29. Thapar, The Past and Prejudice, 31.

30. Sahu, Society and Culture in Post-Mauryan India, 1–3.

31. Kautilya Arthasastra, Part 3, Kangle, 143–44.

32. Thornton, “Minimum Force Philosophy”, 83–106.

33. Jha, Ancient India in Historical Outline, 96–7; Habib and Jha, Mauryan India, 22.

34. Bhandarkar, Asoka, 27–53.

35. Habib and Jha, Mauryan India, 3.

36. Quoted from Sircar, Inscriptions of Asoka, 28.

37. Thapar, Asoka and the Decline of the Mauryas, 204.

38. Sircar, Inscriptions of Asoka, 8–13.

39. Thapar, “Role of Army”, 24–7.

40. Singh, Political Violence, 269.

41. Thapar, Penguin History of Early India, 204–09.

42. Mookerji, Gupta Empire, 17–40.

43. Majumdar, “Expansion and Consolidation of the Empire”, 17–8.

44. Thapar, “History as Literature: The Plays of Visakhadatta”, 779–801.

45. Tripathi, Ancient India, 249–52.

46. Agrawal, Rise and Fall of the Imperial Guptas, 3.

47. Quoted from Bana, Kadambari, 111.

48. Asher, “Historical and Political Allegory in Gupta Art”, 812–24.

49. Roy, “Seeing and Hearing”, 760–78.

50. Singh, “The Power of a Poet”, 739.

51. Sandhu, Military History of Ancient India, 370–71; Singh, The Theory of Force, 80.

52. Tripathi, “Religious Toleration under the Guptas”, 655–64.

53. Witzel, “Brahmanical Reactions to Foreign Influences and to Social and Religious Changes”, 459.

54. Basham, “The Mandasor Inscription of the Silk-Weavers”, 639–51.

55. Majumdar, “Expansion and Consolidation of the Empire:”, 23–5.

56. Willis, “Later Gupta History”, 433–62.

57. Harshacarita by Kane, xi–xxviii, 257–58.

58. Tripathi, History of Kanauj to the Moslem Conquest, 61–77.

59. Sharma, Early Medieval Indian Society.

60. Devahuti, Harsha, 164–65.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kaushik Roy

Kaushik Roy is Guru Nanak Chair Professor in the Department of History, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India. He is also a Global Fellow at Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO), Norway. He has been attached with PRIO in different capacities for about a decade. Previously, he has taught at Visva Bharati University at Santiniketan, West Bengal India and also at Presidency College, Kolkata, India. He has done his PhD from Centre for Historical Studies, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He was also a Junior Fellow at the Centre for Contemporary Studies at Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi. He has received Charles Wallace Fellowship, and research grants from Indian National Science Academy, UGC, etc. He is a member of Indian National Science Academy’s Research Council. Roy specializes on the Eurasian military history. He has worked extensively on both conventional and unconventional wars of pre-modern, early modern and present eras. He has published many books and chapters in edited volumes published from Ashgate, Bloomsbury, Cambridge University Press, E.J. Brill, Oxford University Press, Pickering & Chatto, Routledge, etc. He has also published articles in various peer reviewed journals like Journal of Global History, Journal of Military Ethics, Journal of Military History, War in History, First World War Studies, Modern Asian Studies, Economic and Political Weekly, Studies in History, Indian Economic and Social History Review, etc. Roy is also one of the editors of War and Society in South Asia Series and Wars and Battles of the World Series of Routledge.