O Hanlon 2007 - Military Sports and The History of The Martial Body in India

Military Sports and the History of the Martial Body in India
Author(s): Rosalind O'Hanlon

Source: Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, Vol. 50, No. 4 (2007), pp.
490-523
Published by: Brill
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/25165208
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MILITARY SPORTS AND THE HISTORY
OF THE MARTIAL BODY IN INDIA
BY
ROSALIND O'HANLON*
Abstract
Cultivation of the bodily skills required in cavalry warfare was a prominent theme in India's
pre-colonial societies. Demand for these expertises enabled fighting specialists to develop an
India-wide network of patronage and employment. Wrestling and its associated exercises
became the indispensable accompaniment to military preparation in the early modern period.
Appreciation of the wide social diffusion of these expertises also allows for a better under
standing of colonial demilitarization, the displacement of important cultures of the body, as
well as the loss of mobility and honorable employment.
La formation aux arts de la guerre montee fut une caracteristique dominante important dans
les societes precoloniales de lTnde. Grace a la demande de ces techniques de combat leurs
specialistes surent se creer un reseau de patronage et d'emploi a travers lTnde. Pendant la
periode premoderne les preparatifs de guerre exigerent toujours l'apprentissage de la lutte a
mains nues et des arts de combat associes. En se rendant compte de l'ampleur de la diffu
sion des ces arts martiaux a travers la societe on comprend mieux que la demilitarisation
coloniale emmena la decheance des arts martiaux, ainsi que la perte de mobilite des lutteurs
et la possibilite de trouver un emploi honorable.
Keywords: body, military, wrestling, demilitarization, Indian sports
Martial Cultures in Indian History: Recent Approaches
In recent years, the study of "military history" in South Asia has turned
increasingly to social historical topics. These scholarly themes have not consti
tuted a "social history" of the military in any simple sense, but rather an explo
ration of the interface between armies and Indian society. As is well known, a
distinctive and now familiar feature of India's past was that the military func
* Faculty of Oriental Studies, University of Oxford, rosalind.ohanlon@orinst.ox.ac.uk

Acknowledgements: I am grateful to the Trustees of the Victoria and Albert Museum for
their permission to use the illustrations in this article. I am also very grateful to members of
the Commonwealth and Overseas Seminar in Cambridge, and to Chris Bayly, Peter Carey,
Jos Gommans, Tony Hopkins, Christopher Minkowski, Jaswant Singh, and David Washbrook
for valuable comments on earlier drafts of this article.
? Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2007 JESHO 50,4

Also available online - www.brill.nl
MILITARY SPORTS AND THE HISTORY OF THE MARTIAL BODY IN INDIA 491
tion was drawn more firmly and exclusively under central political control only
during the later nineteenth century consolidation of the colonial state, and then
only very slowly and haltingly. An important, indeed defining, aspect of India's
pre-colonial history lay in the extent to which at very many levels military
skills, organized military resources, and martial identities permeated very widely
through its regional societies, profoundly affecting the forms and limitations of
the Indian state, local structures of authority, aspects of social identity, and pat
terns of social change and mobility.
These insights have informed much recent work. In a number of important
studies, Dirk Kolff has both developed the very useful concept of the "military
labour market" as the great pool of reserve military labor available to pre-colonial
Indian states outside the peaks of the farming season, and illuminated the inter
play between military codes and contemporary cultures of caste.1 Social themes
have further come very much to the fore in the discussion of India's particular
experience of the transforming effects of new military technologies. Stewart Gordon
has explored the military constraints for Indian rulers in the eighteenth century
implicit in their dependence on the families historically responsible for provid
ing cavalry troops, families who needed both the revenues from their military
estates that might otherwise have supported an infantry army, and the opportu
nities to demonstrate individual military prowess that only horse-based military
service could offer.2 Jos Gommans has pointed to another factor contributing to
the continuing strength of India's central Asian-derived traditions of mobile
horse-warrior-ship through the eighteenth century, by focussing on the Afghan
adaptation of new forms of firepower within their own mobile cavalry armies.3
As Seema Alavi has argued, when the East India Company started to exploit
north India's changing military labor market, it found one that was already expand
ing, since the regional states of the eighteenth century sought to diversify the
sources from which they drew their sepoy soldiery and looked increasingly to
1 Dirk H. A. Kolff, Naukar, Rajput and Sepoy: The Ethnohistory of the Military Labour
Market in Hindusthan, 1450-1850 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990); Dirk
H. A. Kolff, "The End of an Ancien Regime: Colonial War in India 1798-1818." In
Imperialism and War: Essays on Colonial Wars in Asia and Africa, eds. J. A. de Moor and
H. L. Wesseling (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1989): 22-49.
2 See the essays in Stewart Gordon, Marathas, Marauders and State Formation in
Eighteenth-Century India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1994) and Stewart Gordon, The
Marathas, 1600-1818 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993).
3 Jos Gommans, "Indian Warfare and Afghan Innovation During the Eighteenth Century."
Studies in History 11.2 (1995): 261-80 and Jos Gommans, Mughal Warfare: Indian Frontiers
and Highroads to Empire, 1500-1700 (New York: Routledge, 2002).
492 ROSALIND O'HANLON
military brokers and entrepreneurs to recruit bodies of professionally-trained

peasant soldiers.4 In his closely focused regional study, Randolph Cooper also
attributes the Company's emerging military dominance by 1820 not to narrow
technological superiority, or to the "backwardness" of Indian military cultures,
but to the Company's ability to gain control of key elements in the wider mil
itary economy.5
The interface between armies and Indian society has emerged as an equally
compelling field of interest for historians of the colonial nineteenth century. The
Company's struggle to demilitarize Indian rural societies proved an extremely
complex challenge, and has been explored in the work of a wide range of his
torians. Some have focused on particular specialist communities. Peter van der
Veer, William Pinch, and many others have examined the great corporations of
Saivite and Vaishnavite warrior monks during this period. India's political fluid
ity from the later seventeenth century provided ideal conditions for their expan
sion, as demand increased for their fighting skills, their military discipline, and
their pragmatic willingness to serve different paymasters as occasion and oppor
tunity presented themselves. However, the long and gradual collapse of the mil
itary labor market and the colonial criminalization of itinerant and mobile
peoples closed down these possibilities, as India's British rulers insisted that
peaceful and prayerful pursuits were the only legitimate business of holy men.6
Pinch has also identified in this process the longer-term effects of India's own
traditions of Vaishnavite reformism, in which religion was also a matter of faith
and spirit, not of bodily techniques, and certainly not of martial pursuits.7
4 Seema Alavi, The Sepoys and the Company: Tradition and Transition in Northern India
1770-1830 (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1995).
5 Randolf G. S. Cooper, The Anglo-Maratha Campaigns and the Contest for India: The
Struggle for Control of the South Asian Military Economy (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2003).
6 Peter van der Veer, "The Power of Detachment: Disciplines of Body and Mind in the
Ramanandi Order." American Ethnologist 16.3 (1989): 458-70; and Peter van der Veer, Gods
on Earth: Religious Experience and Identity in Ayodhya (Delhi: Oxford University Press,
1997): 66-182; William Pinch, Warrior Ascetics and Indian Empires (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2006); David N. Lorenzen, "Warrior Ascetics in Indian History." Journal
of the American Oriental Society 98.1 (1978): 61-75; Dirk H. A. Kolff, "Sannyasi Trader
Soldiers." Indian Economic and Social History Review 8.2 (1971): 213-20; Bernard S. Cohn,
"The Role of the Gosains in the Economy of Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Upper
India." Indian Economic and Social History Review 1.4 (1964): 175-83; W. G. Orr, "Armed
Religious Ascetics in Northern India." Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 24.1 (1940): 81
100; and J. N. Farquar, "The Fighting Ascetics of India." Bulletin of the John Rylands
Library 9 (1925): 431-52.
7 Pinch, Warrior Ascetics: 59-103.
Various studies have focused on the colonial assault on pastoralist and mobile
specialist service communities that had found employment on the fringes of pre
colonial armies.8 Others again have explored India's developing colonial armies
in the period after the defeat of its last major military rivals in the subcontinent,
the long struggle to disarm Indian society, and the reconstruction of the Indian
army after the shocks of the Mutiny Rebellion of 1857.9 In the post-Mutiny
decades, when considerations of security seemed so pressing, military recruit
ment came to focus overwhelmingly on India's "martial races," particularly
those of the Punjab, as the natural social base for a loyal army, and on the more
general reconstruction of its regiments along ethnic and provincial lines as the
best defense against rebellion in the future.10
What is less easy to find in these social histories, however, is very much
exploration of the bodily attributes and expertises of those engaged in these
changing forms of military labor. The degree to which early modern Indian states an
d societies relied on the strength and skills of martial bodies hardly needs
emphasis. Yet we know very little about what it took to develop and maintain
the bodily skills required to survive and succeed as a gentleman trooper, a peasant
soldier, or as one of the many specialist fighting men employed at pre-colonial
courts. Cavalry warfare might be pursued in many different ways, but most of
them involved a complex amalgam of developed strength and dexterity in
wielding heavy arms on horseback, knowledge of the potential of different kinds
of weapons for varying conditions, and familiarity with the shared fighting rou
tines of a corps or war-band. Although cavalry engagements could vary enor
mously in their tactics, it was an essential feature of this type of warfare itself
in the Indian setting that individuals needed proficiency both in the distance weapons
of bow and musket, and in the arms for close combat. Of course, not all cav
alry engagements ended in hand to hand fighting, but both the natural flow of
battle?as troopers sought to close in and press home an advantage?and the
unpredictable course that any fight might take, meant that individual cavalrymen
needed a range of different types of skills in order to maximize their chances of
8 See, for example, Sumit Guha, Environment and Ethnicity in India 1200-1991
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999) and Ajay Skaria, Hybrid Histories: Forests,
Frontiers and Wildness in Western India (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999).
9 Douglas M. Peers, Between Mars and Mammon: Colonial Armies and the Garrison
State in Early Nineteenth-Century India (London: Tauris Academic Studies, 1995) See also
David E. Omissi, The Sepoy and the Raj: The Indian Army, 1860-1947 (London: Macmillan,
1994).
10 Tan Tai Yong, "Sepoys and the Colonial State: Punjab and the Military Base of the
Indian Army 1849-1900." In The British Raj and Its Indian Armed Forces, 1857-1939, eds.
Partha Sarathi Gupta and Anirudh Deshpande (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2002):
45-97.
survival. Historians also know little about the individual and institutional settings
in which these skills were practiced, the prerequisites for developing strength
and stamina, and the manner in which expertises were refined and passed on.
These expertises were important at several levels. In what Gommans has described
as the "post-nomadic" military culture of the Mughal empire, cavalry warfare may
have owed its extraordinary longevity in the Indian setting not only to the social
determinants and technological adaptations noted above, but also to the great flexi
bility that the armored bodies of cavalrymen proficient with a range of weapons
could offer.11 With the assistance of smaller groups of specialist fighters, troopers
with a repertoire of skills could serve in a very wide range of military situations:
from field engagements of the classic kind, to the close combat needed to destroy
and disperse the center of an opposing army, and the besiegement of forts. Cultivation
of the different martial skills that sustained this great versatility formed a signi
ficant component of the culture of pre-colonial courts, both as a part of the martial
accomplishments of military elites, and as an important element in the represen
tation of royal authority itself. Both the drive of rulers to display their powers
through the bodies of their own fighting champions, and the wider demand for
flexible fighting proficiencies generated by the market in military labor, created new
kinds of opportunities for fighting specialists, many of them wrestlers by caste,
who were able to develop an India-wide network of employment and patronage.
Wrestling and its associated exercises thus became in the early modern period
the indispensable accompaniment to military practice and preparation in the
urban culture of military elites, in the context of the camp and the campaign
ing season, and in the rural societies from which peasant soldiers were drawn.
These fused forms of martial preparation emerged very prominently in the
camps of the mobile armies of the eighteenth century, as an indispensable ele
ment in the repertoires both of military elites and of peasant soldiers. Although
there is no space to explore these themes here fully, an appreciation of the wide
social diffusion of these bodily skills?as a route to employment, as a form of
association with warrior status, and as a means to health and leisure?also gives
us a better understanding of colonial demilitarization. As I shall argue, this
looks to be a more complex and indeed in some senses more partial process
when viewed from the perspective of these bodily expertises.
Dimensions of Martial Cultures in India
Before going on to look in more detail at the development of different kinds

of bodily proficiency in military skills, it is worth outlining in a necessarily
11 Jos Gommans, "Warhorse and Post-Nomadic Empire in Asia, c. 1000-1800." Journal of

Global History 2 (2007): 1-21.
rather general way some of the social and practical settings for early modern
warfare. One of the difficulties of doing this, of course, lies in the variability of
military technologies, modes of warfare and warrior codes and cultures across
the subcontinent. Gordon has suggested three distinct "zones of military entre
preneurship" for pre-colonial India, each with its own different military culture.
For North India, he has noted the emergence of a shared Mughal-Rajput ethos,
based on heavy cavalry, plains warfare, and traditions of honorable personal
service in return for rights to landed revenue. In Western India, the peasant
warrior armies of the Maratha kingdoms employed the superior mobility of
lightly armed cavalry to attack slower moving imperial armies, using the forts
and the rugged mountains of the Western Ghats as a refuge. The Nayaka ethos
of Southern India, on the other hand, reflected the unreliable supply of suitable
cavalry horses, relying on the fighting skills of a lightly armored infantry using
combinations of lance, sword, shield, and mace, and well defended forts under
the command of leading military families.12 Of course, these distinctions pro
gressively broke down from the end of the seventeenth century, as new military
technologies began to reshape modes of warfare, and as many states, and par
ticularly the Maratha ones, looked increasingly to a military labor market that
was much more cosmopolitan in its scope. As I shall argue, however, this multi
ethnic character emerged very early in regimes of physical preparation for war
fare, as specialist fighters enjoyed a high degree of mobility between different
courts, and carried their skills with them.
As Daud Ali has remarked, the earliest examples of textual evidence indicate
that martial qualities in some form constituted an important element in the cul
tural repertoire of courtly elites. Didactic literatures prescribed the qualities of
strength, dexterity, daring, and resolution to be cultivated as part of training in
arms, and men's reputations and prospects of advancement depended on their
public performance on the battlefield.13 The elites of the Mughal armies were
drawn from a wide range of regional and ethnic backgrounds, but these all
shared in the responsibility of providing bodies of well-equipped and trained
cavalry for the campaigning season.14 Some of their military contingents were
kin groups selected from military service families within the territories assigned
for their upkeep; other troopers were recruited from the bodies of horsemen that
were locally available for hire. Thus, as Alavi has described, Mughal military
elites developed within an essentially urban social base, particularly as the
12 Stewart Gordon, "Zones of Military Entrepreneurship in India, 1500-1700." In Gordon,

Marathas, Marauders and State Formation (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1994): 182-208.
13 Daud Ali, Courtly Culture and Political Life in Early Medieval India (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2004): 96-102.
14 M. Athar Ali, The Mughal Nobility under Aurangzeb (London: Asia Publishing House,
1966): 38-41.
Mughal court elaborated norms for cultured comportment that diffused through
the urban centers of North India with the expansion of its political authority.
Martial skills and literary accomplishments went hand in hand in this setting. Archery
and wrestling formed part of the education of sons of ashraf urban elites, and
well-known literary figures were often also skilled archers and swordsmen.15
These gendered bodily and literary accomplishments were in turn vital parts of
the repertoire of a gentleman of culture, for whom appropriate bodily deport
ment and the cultivation of bodily health were important signs of gentility.16
Archery practice, sword drills, and exercises aimed at developing strength and
flexibility therefore featured prominently in this urban culture. The paintings of
the Gentil Album?commissioned by Colonel Jean-Baptiste-Joseph Gentil in
Faizabad in the 1770s and reflecting social life in Awadh under Shuja ud
Daulah?convey a sense of these combined forms of military and athletic practice.
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Illustration 1: see footnote 17 below17
15 Alavi, The Sepoys and the Company: 13-7.

16 Rosalind O'Hanlon, "Manliness and Imperial S
42.1 (1999): 47-93. For a further discussion of
"Kingdom, Household and Body: History, Gender
Modern Asian Studies 41.5 (2007): 887-922.
17 The Gentil Album, "Second State of Perfection w
This illustration shows a scene of archery practice featuring different types

of bows and what looks like a mechanism for practising the draw correctly. The
play depicted with swordsticks and a shield is fori gadka. The Persian or Urdu
term for the same game is hanumanti lakadi, which derives from the Persian
lakad, a blow or cuff, while the reference to Hanuman probably stems from the
association of this god with wrestling in Hindu culture.18 A figure with a lance
is shown, and there is a dagger fight with referees or instructors that is proba
bly bank, a mode of self-defense that combined the use of a dagger with
wrestling holds. The painting further depicts the range of exercises commonly
associated with preparation for wrestling, but these were also part of a bodily
routine designed to assure a more general state of health and wellbeing. The
first figure is shown with his mat, appropriately doing the suryanamaskar, the
morning salute to the sun. The next one is doing baitaka, deep knee bends that
develop the muscles of the legs. The next two figures are working with the
lezim, the heavy bamboo bow with chain instead of bowstring, used to develop
strength in the upper body and arms. The person at the end is doing danda, an
exercise like a press-up, used to develop strength in the chest and arms. Other
figures are working with different types of clubs, usually termed gada or mog
dur, and with a nala, a heavy stone ring with a handle in the center. These
"exercises for different parts of the day" appear very much as leisure activities
and take place against the background of various board games and a game with
cowries.
In this courtly cultivation of martial values, Indian royal practice itself also
provided an important model. As we will see, classical normative literature for
Indian kings emphasized their responsibility for training and leading troops in
warfare. Fighting champions regularly found patronage at early modern courts:
they were employed to excite martial spirit, to instruct in techniques of warfare,
to entertain, and to convey through the health and vigor of their bodies the
king's own qualities of power and generosity. In these settings, a close homol
ogy linked the bodily strength of the king with the health of the kingdom, which
Parts of the Day," Victoria and Albert Museum, IS 25:46-1980. V and A Images/Victoria
and Albert Museum, London.
18 The Maratha uses of these exercises are described in D. C. Mujumdar, Encyclopedia of
Indian Physical Culture (Baroda: Good Companions, 1950): 238-80. Bank and other fighting
skills are described in Abdul Halim Sharar, Lucknow: The Last Phase of an Oriental Culture
(Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1994): 109-15. For an important discussion of wrestling
skills in the modern context with some historical material, see Joseph Alter, The Wrestler's
Body: Identity and Ideology in North India (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of
California Press, 1992) and Phillip B. Zarrilli, When the Body becomes all Eyes: Paradigms,
Discourses and Practices of Power in Kalarippayattu, a South Indian Martial Art (Delhi:
Oxford University Press, 1998).
was metaphorically represented as a body made up of different limbs. Central

to this vision was the harmonizing figure of the philosopher-king, whose virtu
ous government would bring about harmony between the different constituent
elements of the kingdom, each according to their natures.19
This urban martial culture also offered significant opportunities for popular
participation. Wrestling and other athletic displays formed a standard part of
entertainment. Regional courts as well as the households of great nobles offered
rewards and patronage to fighting champions, staging combats as part of private
entertainment as well as part of a wider culture of urban leisure. The champi
ons who provided these services frequently traveled between different court cen
ters, often at the invitation of royal patrons keen to try out their own best
fighters against new challengers. These specialist fighters came from a wide
range of different backgrounds: some belonged to families in which particular
skills were passed down between generations, some had carved out individual
martial careers for themselves as particularly successful fighting men, while oth
ers belonged to specialist fighting communities such as the jyeshtimalla com
munity of Gujarat, which, as we shall see, established an India-wide network of
patronage and employment. These fighters often had a multiplicity of roles: they
functioned as personal bodyguards, providers of special skills in the infantry,
expert demonstrators, and as sparring partners and masseurs in local gymnasia.
These skills also extended to different forms of medical expertise, ranging from
therapeutic manipulation of damaged limbs to bone-setting and the healing of
wounds sustained during combat.20
Unfortunately, we have rather less easily accessible evidence for the ways in
which martial physical cultures developed in rural settings. In this context, of
course, the military labor markets of north and central India offered an impor
tant avenue of employment for peasant farmers during the dry season, provid
ing a way of life that combined farming with periodic military service, and that
was open to all with the martial skills necessary for survival, and to whom a
19 For this essentially embodied understanding of good government in South Asia and its
connection to the Greek and Persian-influenced ethical digests of the akhlaq tradition, see
Muzaffar Alam, The Languages of Political Islam: India 1200-1800 (London: Hurst and Company,
2004) and C. A. Bayly, Origins of Nationality in South Asia: Patriotism and Ethical
Government in the Making of Modern India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998): 13-7.
20 See P. K. Gode, "History of the Practice of Massage in Ancient and Medieval India
between c. BC 1000 and AD 1900." Annals of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute
36 (1955): 85-113; Arion Rosu, "Les Marman et les Arts Martiaux Indiens." Journal
Asiatique 3-4 (1981): 416-51; Francis Zimmerman, "From Classic Texts to Learned Practice:
Methodological Remarks on the Study of Indian Medicine." Social Science and Medicine 12
(1978): 97-103; and Zarrilli, When the Body becomes all Eyes: 163-200.
Rajput and warrior code appealed. As Kolff has argued, in these settings where
armed service was a feature of the farming year, military sports such as sword
and stick fighting and wrestling were a part of daily rural life and leisure.21 A
different route through which rural people could exploit opportunities for mili
tary employment lay in the corporations of warrior ascetics that became such
an important feature of the military labor market during the early modern
period. In addition to their military, financial, and political roles, historians have
explored their recruitment patterns, their internal structures concerning the rela
tionship between guru and chela, their Shaivite and Vaishnavite religious cul
tures, and their sometimes ferocious competition with each other for ritual
primacy and political advantage.22 However, much less is known about their
own modes of preparation for warfare, and their relationship to other local mil
itary cultures. What is interesting in this case is that there seems to be little evi
dence to suggest that they offered or shared their very well known fighting skills
with military people outside their orders. As we shall see, however, there is
some indication that other mobile military specialists did see them as potential
rivals in the provision of martial expertise.
These, then, were some of the contexts in which military skills of different
kinds were inculcated, developed, and practiced. Contemporary accounts of
weaponry?such as the lists that appear in the A'in-i Akbari, the great imperial
gazetteer prepared by Abu'l Fazl, servant of the Mughal emperor Akbar?
emphasize the diverse and specialist uses of different types of weapons. These
included those for fighting at close quarters?swords and shields, maces, battle
axes, pikes, lances, and daggers?and those employed for distance fighting, bow
and arrow, javelin, and matchlock.23 Unfortunately, as Gommans and Kolff have
pointed out, although there has been much valuable technical research into
Indian armaments from the medieval period, this has yet to be integrated into a
wider social history.24 What were the bodily capacities and skills required by
these different weapons? What the bow needed was a combination of stamina
through developed strength in the arms, shoulders, and back, steadiness of aim
21 Kolff, Naukar, Rajput and Sepoy: 29-31.

22 See in particular Pinch, Warrior Ascetics: 59-103.
23 Abu'l Fazl, A'in-i Akbari, ed. H. Blochmann (Calcutta: Bibliotheca Indica, 1872) vol. I:
117-8. Extensive accounts of Indian weaponry are in W. Egerton, An Illustrated Handbook
of Indian Arms (London: Allen and Co., 1880); William Irvine, The Army of the Indian
Moghuls: Its Organisation and Administration (London: Luzac, 1903): 73-151; G. N. Pant,
Studies in Indian Weapons and Warfare (New Delhi: Army Educational Stores, 1970); G. N.
Pant, Indian Arms and Armour (New Delhi: Army Educational Stores, 1978); G. N. Pant,
Indian Archery (Delhi: Agam Kala Prakashan, 1978).
24 Jos J. L. Gommans and Dirk H. A. Kolff, Warfare and Weaponry in South Asia, 1000
1800 (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001): 5-6.
even after many discharges of arrows, dexterity in rapid fire, and an under
standing of the trajectories that different kinds of arrows might take depending
on the placing of the target and the conditions of the wind. Swords differed in
shape and application, depending on whether they were used for slashing, cut
ting, or thrusting.25 This again needed strength in the upper body, but also skill
in developing the right cutting and slashing techniques, and a knowledge of the
vulnerable points of a cavalryman's armored body. Spears likewise came in dif
ferent forms: cavalry lances used to spear or at least unseat an opponent dur
ing a charge, short javelins for throwing, and heavier pikes that were used defensively
by infantrymen. Axes, maces, and war clubs depended as much on their weight
as on their spikes and sharp edges to achieve a smashing effect, and probably
needed greater crude strength, as well as some advantage of height. Short
swords, daggers, and knives could also serve many different and often quite
specialist fighting purposes for hand to hand combat, ranging from the broad re
shaped jamdhar that was very much a weapon of thrust, to the double ended
dagger whose rapid movement could clear a space through a crowded field.26
Body armor was also an important part of these accoutrements and varied enor
mously in weight and composition, but a heavy cotton quilted jacket and cuirass
or mail-shirt to protect the trunk of the body formed the basis of most styles.27
How then might these have been used, and particularly used in combination,
in battle situations? Of course, the existence of different military cultures of the
kind that Gordon has described led to a considerable regional variety in the use
of different weapons. Even in the same region, fighting specializations and
changing techniques of warfare meant that any individual's repertoire, whether
aristocrat trooper or peasant mercenary soldier, was inevitably limited. What
does seem very clear, however, is that in most military cultures of the subcon
tinent, individual cavalrymen needed expertise in both distance weapons and in
close up combat. In the classic accounts of Mughal cavalry warfare, the artillery
of the vanguard opened the attack. The different units on the left and then the
right wings of the cavalry next delivered their charges, first with fire from bows
and matchlocks, and finally closed in for hand to hand combat with sword, bat
tle-axe, mace, and spear. These wings included divisions of heavy cavalry,
mobile commando units poised to envelop a weakened enemy, and flying
25 For a discussion of the superior qualities of the best Indian swords, see Bruce Lenman,
"The Weapons of War in CI8th India." Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research
46 (1968): 38-9.
26 Jagdish Narayan Sarkar, The Art of War in Medieval India (New Delhi: Munshiram
Manoharlal, 1984): 122.
27 A short discussion of armor is in Sarkar, The Art of War: 123-6.
columns of agile light cavalry that were able to move in quickly and attack
from the rear.28 Both the flow of battle and its unpredictability thus meant that
individual horsemen needed to be able to move quickly from engagement at a
distance, to hand to hand fighting. Historically, the Maratha armies fluctuated in
the relative emphasis they placed on infantry and cavalry. During Shivaji's
early struggles to establish his rule, he fielded greater numbers of infantrymen
than of cavalry because of the difficult terrain of mountain warfare. In the
expansionist phase of the Maratha polity from the early eighteenth century,
its armies looked principally to lighter lances, sabres, and shields appropriate
for long distance riding and raiding, but these cavalry also carried, and were
familiar with, a wider range of close combat and distance weapons.29 Even
in Maratha engagements such as the battle of Debhoi in 1731, in which
matchlocks, mortars, and rocketry played a critical role, contemporary sources
still describe a flow of battle in which horse and elephant-mounted archers,
musketeers, artillerymen, and foot-soldiers were drawn into hand to hand com
bat around the elephants of the opposing commanders.30 Nayaka modes of war
fare in Southern India relied on a smaller cavalry component in relation to
infantry. Here too, a combination of fighting skills and military codes required
the development of a range of bodily proficiencies: sword and lance for elites
for whom hand to hand combat represented real honor in warrior-ship, and
small arms and country weapons for lightly armed peasant foot-soldiers, whose
chief advantage lay in their familiarity with the local terrain.31
This requirement for some level of proficiency in a range of different
weapons wielded both on horseback and sometimes on foot, shaped the kind of
bodily preparation that a cavalryman might undertake. An effective cavalryman,
and even an ineffective one who nevertheless hoped to survive on the field,
needed some developed strength of arms and shoulders, waist and back, as well
as dexterity in the handling of a horse. Working up a basic proficiency thus
called both for development of basic bodily strength, and for skill itself in the
use of particular weapons. Irvine therefore suggests that although Mughal
armies paid little attention to the massed drilling of cavalry, "the individual,
on the other hand, paid the minutest attention to the training of his body, and
28 Ibid.: 212-4; Irvine, Army of the Indian Moghuls: 229-43.

29 Gordon, "Zones of Military Entrepreneur ship": 193-5; Surendra Nath Sen, The Military
System of the Marathas (Calcutta: K. P. Bagchi, 1977): 63-78.
30 R. G. S. Cooper and N. K. Wagle, "Maratha Artillery: From Dabhoi to Assaye."
Journal of the Ordnance Society 1 (1995): 59-78.
31 Velcheru Narayana Rao, David Shulman and Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Symbols of Substance:
Court and State in Nayaka Period Tamilnadu (New Delhi: Oxford University Press 1992):
220-42.
exercising himself with all his weapons. For this there were a series of move
ments practised daily."32 As we shall see, it was in this context that wrestling
and its associated regimes of practice became so widely a part of the military
preparation of cavalrymen in early modern India, functioning as an all-round
means of developing strength, stamina, and agility.
Martial Physical Culture in Early Modern Settings:

Some Texts and Contexts
An important question in this setting concerns the transmission of these bod

ily skills. Both Sanskrit and Indo-Persian literary cultures offered a wide range
of technical guides and treatises. The classical Sanskrit tradition of Dhanurveda
texts usually ranged beyond the skills of archery alone, covering instructions
for kings on the training of warriors according to their status, and on their royal
duty to arrange fighting matches among men of equal strength and skill.33
Later Sanskrit compendia, including those that we might class as "mirrors for
princes," also offered treatises on military arts.34 What is striking about many
of these, however, is the close connection with practice that they suggest. In its
discussion of archery, the mid-fourteenth century Brihat Sarangadhara Paddhati
of Sarangadhara did not only include the different moves for standing, drawing,
and shooting, but also detailed various other techniques describing the con
struction and feathering of different kinds of arrows, the chemical processes
most effective for hardening arrowheads, and the herbs and roots that could be
used to poison arrowheads, increase concentration, and safeguard the body from
the arrows of enemies.35 Another text in this genre, the Dhanurveda Samhita of
Vasistha, shows an even closer relationship between text and practice.36 This
Dhanurveda differs significantly in some of its details from earlier versions. In
32 Irvine, Army of the Indian Moghuls: 185.

33 Manmatha Nath Dutt Shastri, edAgni Puranam (Varanasi: Chowkhamba Sanskrit Series
Office, 1967): 894-902.
34 See, for example, the encyclopaedic Manasollasa of the western Calukya King of
Kalyana, which lists a wide range of sports and amusements appropriate to kings. G. K.
Shrigondekar, ed. Manasollasa of King Somadeva (Baroda: Oriental Institute, 1939) vol. II:
25-8.
35 Peter Peterson, ed. Sarngadhara Paddhati (Bombay: Nirnaya Sagar Press, 1915):
263-90. For another compendium including chapters on the arts of warfare, written by a con
temporary of Akbar, see Pandita Vishnu Prasad, ed. Viramitrodaya (Benaras: Chowkhamba
Sanskrit Series) vols. XX, IV (1914): 301-319.
36 Purnima Ray, ed. Dhanurveda Samhita of Vasistha (Delhi: J. P. Publishing House,
1991): 66. There is also a Telugu version of the Dhanurveda: Veturi Prabhakara Sastry, ed.
Dhanurvidyavilasamu (Madras: Government Oriental Manuscripts Library, 1950).
particular, it includes a more extensive discussion of battle arrays than earlier

ones, suggestions for the training and disposition of foot-soldiers, ways to
improve communication between the king and his troops, and even a reference
to ways of fighting in water in small boats.37 Interestingly also, and again unlike
other earlier versions, this text describes Siva, the original source of all knowl
edge of the arts of war, as affirming that the second and third great social
categories of the Sanskrit tradition, Kshatriya warriors and Vaishya men of
commerce had the same rights as Brahmans to use the bow on the battlefield.38
It is tempting to see this text possibly as a very late one, reflecting modes of
warfare and the military needs of the late seventeenth century or later, but this
needs further research.39
Contemporary Indo-Persian literature on warfare also suggests an interplay
between literary and practical expertise. Here too, works falling within the "mir
rors for princes" genre included technical information on the military training
of troops.40 As might be expected, royal libraries offered a range of more tech
nical works on archery and swordsmanship, as well as texts on the care of
horses and elephants, and other royal sports such as falconry. As Alois Sprenger
reported in 1896, even after some decades of depredation by courtiers, the Tophkhana
library of Lucknow contained works on stick and staff games, archery, swords
manship, hawking and falconry, and horse training and medicine.41 One of these
works, a text on chub bail, swordstick games, dating from the early eighteenth
century, invokes the authority of a dynasty of skilled fencers and wrestlers or
pahelwan at the Delhi court dating back to the time of the emperor Alamgir in
the late seventeenth century.
The author pays great deference to the opinions of Alyy Naqy and of Mohammad
Bulaqy and Myr Arifallah. The first of these Pahlawans flourished at Delhi under
Furrikh Siyar; his descendants are celebrated to this day as skilful fencers here and at
Delhie. Mohammad Bulaqy, I am told, flourished under Alumgyr.42
Another book in the same collection suggests that these works were not sim
ply anodyne classics reprised from earlier texts, but may have been derived
37 Ray, Dhanurveda Samhita: 67-73. See also the discussion in E. D. Kulkarni, "The
Dhanurveda and its Contribution to Lexicography." Bulletin of the Deccan College Research
Institute 14.3 (1952): 209-221.
38 Ibid.: 3.
39 P. C. Chakrabarti also suggests that the text is a later seventeenth century one, from its
use of the term chhatrapati as the name of a particularly auspicious class of warrior. See
P. C. Chakrabarti, The Art of War in Ancient India (Delhi: Oriental Publishers, 1972): 70.
40 Sarkar, The Art of War: 340.
41 Alois Sprenger, Report of the Researches into the Muhammadan Libraries of Luc know
(Calcutta: Office of the Superintendent of Government Printing, 1896): 17.
42 Ibid.: 30-1.
from more immediate practical settings. The Usul-i Qabza by Abu Hisam
al-Din Muhammad, written in 1624, deals with the fundamental principles of
power in archery, but in language that mixes Chaghtai and Hindi words into the
Persian.43 Other Persian texts on archery certainly reflect elements of practical
experience. The Risalah-i tir andazi of Qilich Khan, completed in 1640, is a
treatise on archery by an author whose father was an archer in Akbar's army.44
In other and even more important senses in this setting, works of instruction
and practical expertise were closely connected. The Sanskrit Mallapurana was
written for the jyeshtimalla community of wrestling specialists who traced their
origins to Modhera in Gujarat. These were fighting specialists who migrated
across the subcontinent in the early modern period in order to seek patronage
and employment, and whose skills seemed to have been in demand in a wide
range of military settings.45 This caste purana brought together an account of
the honorable origins of wrestling as an effective fighting craft, detailed practi
cal information on different aspects of the wrestler's skills, and provided a
description of the proper place and treatment for wrestlers at royal courts. The
purana is moreover strongly Vaishnavite in tone. Part of its purpose may have
been to reconcile the martial specialism and bodily preoccupations of the malla
community with Vaishnavite religiousity. It is possible that this attempt to iden
tify a mobile martial community with Krishna worship represents an example
of the struggle between military and mobile cultures and Vaishnavite reformism
that Pinch has identified as an important underlying conflict in the early mod
ern period.46
The purana is an extremely interesting text and its content is worth close
analysis. It recounts that a community of Brahmans in Gujarat were the first to
learn the secrets of the wrestler's craft. Having slain the demon king Kamsa,
Krishna and his brother Balarama passed through this town on their way to
Dwarka, and were pleased to see the whole community engaged in prayerful
activity. The Brahmans of the town rejoiced that Krishna, whom, as they said,
even the yogis had never seen, had come to them. Pleased by their response,
43 Ibid.: 30.
44 D. N. Marshall, Mughals in India: A Bibliographical Survey of Manuscripts (London:
Mansell Publishing, 1985): 398.
45 Bhogilal Jayachandabhai Sandesara and Ramanlal Nagarji Mehta, eds. Mallapurana
(Baroda: Oriental Institute, 1964). The mss is dated 1731 Samvat (1674-5 CE), but is clearly
a copy of earlier works. Sandesara and Mehta argue that the work is likely to have been
composed no earlier than the fifteenth century, given the strong influence of Krishna devo
tionalism in it. See also Veena Das, "A Sociological Approach to the Caste Puranas: A Case
Study." Sociological Bulletin 17.2 (1968): 152-3. In its literal translation, the term jyeshti
malla means "most excellent" malla, or wrestler.
46 Pinch, Warrior Ascetics: 59-103.
Krishna offered to share the secrets of wrestling. Krishna overcame their initial
reluctance by explaining that he had only been able to destroy Kamsa with the
help of this craft, and that they would be able to use it to protect dharma in
this fallen age of the kaliyuga.41
Krishna then discoursed at length on the different types of wrestlers fit to
receive training, on the proper arrangement of the clean earth of the wrestling
pit or akhada, on the routines wrestlers should follow before exercising, and on
the forms of training suitable to different types of people and seasons. The exer
cises were presented in their order of superiority: wrestling combat itself,
wrestling with a pillar or pole around which the body is twisted, exercises with
stone rings and clubs, danda and baitaka, and swimming and massage, tailored
to different kinds of body and mood. Wrestling was thus not just presented as
martial preparation but as a means to health and vitality, and Krishna elabo
rated on the regimes of eating, bathing, exercising, and rest appropriate to the
different seasons. Different wrestling holds, different types of wrestling combat
and their respective rules, including wrestling involving the use of vajra
mushti?spiked coverings for the fists used to strike and wound the opponent?
were all described in great detail.48 Krishna also gave instructions on the proper
place of such combat at the royal court. Wrestling was considered to be joyful,
to stimulate enthusiasm, and remove sorrow; kings should therefore always wit
ness it, bringing friends, ministers, citizens, and members of their own family.
The king himself should rise early to bring earth for the arena, and at the end
of the bouts should give the wrestlers presents and send them round the town
in a triumphal procession on elephants.49 Thus reassured, the Brahmans grate
fully accepted the knowledge of wrestling. The purana ends with a list of the
different gotra or social divisions in the jyeshtimalla caste.
It is possible, then, that this text represents a kind of guild manual for a com
munity many of whose members were widely dispersed by demand for their
fighting skills and their own willingness to travel in search of opportunities.
Even if many of these fighting specialists did not themselves have literate skills,
they worked in urban and courtly settings where many people did, and where,
as we shall see, some of them formed quite close relationships with the elites
that they served. Texts like this may have provided them with a reliable source
of practical information about the honorable origins of their craft, authoritative
details as to the correct performance of its different component elements, and
47 Sandesara and Mehta, Mallapurana: 8.

48 Ibid.: 9-11.
49 Ibid.: 11.
the proper importance of wrestlers and their martial skills at royal courts. It is
further interesting that the text contains a slighting reference to "yogis"; these
might have been seen as representative of another mobile and sometimes mar
tial tradition, but one with lesser knowledge than themselves, and without the
dharmic respectability to which these jyeshtimallas laid claim.
Military Sports in Court Settings
Many contemporary accounts of early modern courts suggest a wide circula

tion of different fighting specialists such as the jyeshtimallas. They served as a
part of court entertainment, as specialists available to support elite martial cul
tures, as instructors in military exercises for troops practicing in gymnasia, and
sometimes as specialist foot-soldiers. Their displays symbolized the expansive
power of the king, particularly at important moments in the public ritual of the
court. The report of the Portuguese visitor Paes on the morning exercises of the
Vijayanagara king Krishnadevaraya in the 1520s is well known, but may be
worth recalling here, for the way in which it exemplifies the combination of weights,
sword exercise, wrestling, and riding practice that constituted his daily routine.
Having anointed himself with oil, the king
covers his loins with a small cloth, and takes in his arms great weights made of earth
enware and then, taking a sword, he exercises himself with it until he has sweated out
all the oil, and then he wrestles with one of his own wrestlers. After this labour he
mounts a horse and gallops about the plain in one direction and another till dawn, for
he does all this before daybreak. Then he goes to wash himself and a Brahman washes
him whom he holds sacred and who is a great favourite of his and is a man of great
wealth; and after he is washed he goes to where his pagoda is inside the palace and
makes his orisons and ceremonies, according to custom.50
It is particularly interesting in this context that the Telugu didactic poem?

usually attributed to Krishnadevaraya?draws such a clear connection between
the health of the king's body and the prosperity of the land. A king should
collect around him people skilled in statecraft, protect his subjects, crush his
enemies, maintain proper social hierarchies, strengthen his forts, and purify
his cities
and thus strengthen himself and increase his longevity just as a man strengthens his own
body and increases his longevity by consulting good doctors, by learning the properties
of the seven dhatus and taking medicines compounded with gold and other minerals, by
taking food so as to suit his constitution, by seeing that wind does not accumulate in
his body, by regular anointments, by the nourishment of all parts, by counteracting the
change of the colour of the skin and the hair turning grey, by seeing that the teeth are
50 R. Sewell, A Forgotten Empire (London: Allen and Unwin, 1924): 249-50.
firm, by seeing that the arms and similar parts grow and other parts like the stomach
do not grow, by cleansing the system so as to increase its vitality.
Wrestlers and the health-giving massage they provided also featured as a part
of the king's routine: he should spend the middle part of the day in the com
pany of "massagers, wrestlers, cooks and hunters."51 Writing in about 1536, the
traveler Nuniz noted the particular association between wrestling forms of com
bat in Vijayanagara and the festival of Mahanavami, held to mark the start of
the military campaigning season. During Mahanavami, the king's numerous
wrestlers demonstrated their skills before him, "and the one most wounded goes
and takes his reward in the shape of a silk cloth, such as the King gives to these
wrestlers. They have a captain over them, and they do not perform any other
service in the kingdom."52
Early modern courts routinely sought information about the military strength
and capabilities of their potential enemies.53 The Gajapati kings of Orissa were
longstanding enemies of the Vijayanagara rulers and detailed reports of the
strength of Gajapati warriors and their modes of combat therefore directly trav
eled back to the Vijayanagara court. These reports describe the extraordinarily
heavy weights that Gajapati wrestlers working out in the gymnasia of the city
were able to lift and throw around. In this instance, however, the athletes seen
at practice were not only wrestlers, but also troopers and cavalrymen. The
account gives us a very clear sense of the close reflection of battle moves that
these troopers were rehearsing in the gymnasium.
They raise a sack weighing 10 paddes to the height of the uplifted arm of a standing
man and throw it upon their own bodies. Moreover, they catch the sack between their
thighs, and suspend themselves in the air taking hold of the cross-beam. The reason for
taking this exercise is this: while engaged in battle, the troopers are accustomed to carry
away their opponents bodily imprisoning them between one of their arms and the
body . . . The soldiers practice this exercise in order to remain firm courageously in their
seats on such occasions.
The visitors to the Gajapati's gymnasium also saw a lot of sword practice,
with athletes trying their skills on the trunks of tamarind trees and on iron bars,
which constituted a close approximation to armored bodies for the practicing
troopers. These fighters were so impressive that "the wrestlers of the country
who go there return with a feeling that it is not possible for them to cope with
their methods of taking exercise. The wealth and strength of that place cannot
51 K. A. Nilakanta Sastri and N. Venkataramanayya, Further Sources of Vijayanagara

History (Madras: University of Madras, 1946): 165.
52 Ibid.: 378.
53 C. A. Bayly, Empire and Information: Intelligence Gathering and Social Commu
nication in India, 1780-1870 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996): 10-55.
be seen anywhere else."54 Vijayanagara was not without its own gymnasia, as
the Jesuit du Jarric reported when he visited one clearly intended for aristocratic
use early in the next century. In this instance again, the routine consisted of a
combination of sword exercises and forms of wrestling:
The house fitted for this has a yard in the centre, the pavement of which is covered with
a layer of lime so smooth it looks like a mirror; there is a walk around it, spread over
with red sand, on which they rest as on a soft bed. One who would wrestle strips him
self. Then several strong and brawny youth called geitas, who are ready beforehand, rub
the nobleman; then they box, jump, fence and take other kinds of exercise with him, in
order to strengthen him; and this they do until perspiration flows freely. Then the geitas
cover the whole of the nobleman's body with sand, and massage him, and move his
arms and legs in every direction as if they would disjoint his bones. Finally, the noble
man is brushed, anointed and washed with warm water; and when dry, dresses himself.
Noblemen take this kind of exercise almost every day before dinner, in order to be fit
and healthy.55
The "geitas" mentioned here are almost certainly the jyeshtimallas referred to
above. These wrestling specialists thus did not only find support and patronage
in displays of combat, but also in lesser service roles in aristocratic gymnasia,
where their skills both in the techniques of swordplay, wrestling, and post
exercise massage were in demand from young noblemen.
This mobility of fighting specialists, and the wider links between kingship,
displays of fighting skills, and the military needs of early modern states were
even more explicitly present at the Mughal court. In this setting, the rich Persian
heritage of wrestling and the association between kingship and martial heroism
developed in the Shahnama, the Persian "Book of Kings", offered a powerful
source of imagery in the development of Mughal military culture.56 From the
information on the court of Akbar in particular, and the much more extensive
imperial documentation and image making that emerged from it, it is possible
to get a sense of the diversity of fighting specialists and champions that found
employment and patronage there. A wide range of these were listed as part of
the Mughal foot-soldiery. AbuT Fazl first lists matchlock bearers, porters, palace
guards, runners, and spies. He then describes the wide range of different shamsherbaz
or swordsmen, each immensely skilled, swift, agile, and courageous. Those
that used a wooden stick or chub-dasti were called lakrait. This term probably
54 Sastri and Venkataramanayya, Further Sources of Vijayanagara History: 111-2. I am

extremely grateful to Dominik Wujastyk for this reference.
55 Henry Heras, The Aravidu Dynasty of Vijaynagara (Madras: B. G. Paul and Co., 1927):
313-4.
56 For the imagery of the Shahnama in India, see Priscilla B. Soucek, "Persian Artists in
Mughal India: Influences and Transformations." Muqarnas 4 (1987): 166-81. For Persian wrestling
traditions, see C. E. Bosworth et al., eds. Encyclopaedia of Islam (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1995):
238-40, "pahlawan."
derives from hanumanti lakadi, the Persian phrase for fari gadka. Yek-hat
fought without a weapon and with one hand only. Paharaits used a particular
kind of shield; banaits used a long sword; and bankulis fought with a particu
lar kind of bent sword. The pahelwan or wrestlers, who came from Iran, Turan,
and Hindusthan, were recorded next, and the list ends with "those people of rare
knowledge from Gujarat that they call mallas." Well-matched pairs of these
fighting men offered daily entertainment to the court, and were rewarded with
many presents.57
The inculcation of military skills was also an important part of the duties of
imperial officials. The farman or imperial order issued in 1588 at the start of
the new era instituted by the emperor, instructed government servants, lords,
and others responsible for the administration of affairs to pay particular atten
tion to the arms and accoutrements of their soldiers. It urged them to employ
themselves continually in the practice of archery and shooting, "so that they
may teach the soldiers the exercise for doing these things." The term used here
is warzish, meaning custom, habit, or exercise.58
Wrestlers and swordsmen likewise occupied an important place at Jahangir's
court. On a visit to the city of Bijapur, he asked that if they had a wrestler or
celebrated swordsman they should send him to the court. Jahangir recalled that
they sent a Mughal, Shir Ali, "who was a wrestler by profession and had great
experience in the art, together with certain sword-players. I put Shir Ali to wres
tle with the wrestlers and athletes who were in attendance on me, and they
could none of them compete with him." Jahangir therefore retained Shir Ali in
his service, gave him the title of "the athlete of the capital," and a military
estate.59 The popularity of wrestling as a public entertainment in the imperial
city of Agra also becomes evident from the way in which Jahangir ordered
the city authorities to calculate its population. The authorities counted the peo
ple assembled at the wrestling arenas of the city, on an ordinary day, and found
that at none of the arenas less than two or three thousand people had gathered.60
This combined culture of wrestling with military preparation naturally
extended from these urban settings to the camps of troopers on military
57 Abu'l Fazl, A'in-i Akbari, i, a'in-i piyadagan: 189.

58 Syed Nawab Ali, ed. Mirat-i-Ahmadi of AU Muhammad Khan (Baroda: Oriental
Institute, 1928) vol. I: 167-8. Warzishkhana is another Persian term for a gymnasium. This
history, completed in the early 1760s by the last imperial diwan of Gujarat, includes a large
number of official documents and orders of the Mughal court.
59 Henry Beveridge, ed. The Tuzuk-i-Jahangiri or Memoirs of Jahangir (Delhi: Munshiram
Manoharlal, 1978) vol. I: 335.
60 Aparajita Ray, ed. Autobiographical Memoirs of the Emperor Jahangueir, Translated
from a Persian Manuscript by David Price (Calcutta: Editions Indian, 1972): 13.
campaigns. Traveling from Agra to Patna in the 1630s, Peter Mundy watched
soldiers taking "exercises to harden and enure themselves to labour, for they
would tugg and wrestle one with another, tumble on the ground, beatinge and
thumpinge themselves thereon in a strange manner and posture."61 The devel
opment of the physical skills of commanders and their troopers continued to be
an important preoccupation at the later Mughal courts. Bernier reported that the
emperor Aurangzeb inspected his contingents of cavalry every day. During these
inspections, "the King takes pleasure also in having the blades of cutlasses tried
on dead sheep, brought before him without the entrails and neatly bound up.
Young Omrahs, Mansebdars and Gourze-berdars or mace bearers, exercise their
skill and put forth all their strength to cut through the four feet, which are fas
tened together, and the body of the sheep at one blow."62
Martial Specialists and Military Cultures at the Maratha Courts

These links between mobile fighting specialists, elite martial cultures, and the
wider military preparation of troops emerge in a particularly clear form at the
Maratha courts. The fostering of these skills appears as a particularly deliberate
policy during the major period of Maratha expansion. In his early eighteenth
century description of the principles of the Maratha polity, the minister Ramchandra
Amatya described how teachers of physical culture should contribute to the mil
itary skills of princes. "Royal teachers, such as professional wrestlers and other
experts (jethi) who are well versed in the arts and knowledge of spear-throwing
(bhejane) sword-playing (parajne) wrestling (kusti ghene) and athletic exercises
(talimkarane) should be engaged. Under their instructions each of those arts
should be taught."63 He also described the martial specialists that the greatest
Maratha war-leader, Shivaji, had gathered around him. These did not only
include strong horses and good shooting men, but also foot-soldiers trained to
use the vita, a lance attached to a string and thrown; foot-soldiers specialized
in the patta, the long straight double-edged sword favored by Maratha swords
men; specialists in bank, musket men, and archers.64
Many of the letters between the peshwa ministers of the Marathas and their
allies refer to martial exercises and the cultivation of military skills. In these
texts "jetti" feature very prominently. The letters emphasize the seriousness with
61 R. C. Temple, ed. The Travels of Peter Mundy in Europe and Asia 1608-1667
(Cambridge: Hakluyt Society, 1907-36) vol. II: 110.
62 Francois Bernier, Travels in the Mogul Empire AD 1656-1668 (London: Humphrey
Milford, 1914): 262-3.
63 S. V. Putambekar, "The Ajnapatra or Royal Edict." Journal of Indian History 8 (1929): 104.
64 Ibid.: 90. The Maratha use of the vita and patta are described in Mujumdar,
Encyclopedia: 238, 280.
which Maratha leaders took their regimes of exercise, their extensive patronage
of wrestlers, the roles of wrestlers as assistants in military instruction, and the
wider popularity of wrestling contests, often very bloody in nature, as a spec
tator sport. Nanasaheb peshwa frequented the gymnasium for exercise and kept
prominent wrestlers at his court. His relative, one Anandrao, was a very talented
wrestler, who fought and killed a jetti from Karnataka in front of Chhatrapati
Shahu Bhosle, and the king was so pleased that he rewarded him with an
inam.65 Sadashivrao Bhau was known for his enthusiasm for the gymnasium,
but after an attempt on his life by a trooper named Muzaffar Khan, he wrote to
Nanasaheb peshwa in December 1759 to say that the wound in his back pre
vented him from his usual regime of danda and suryanamaskara.66 The young
boys of the peshwa's family were similarly enthusiastic. In early 1749 Ragunathrao,
then about 15, had been taken out for a month of riding with the hunting party
of Chhatrapati Shahu. He wrote to his brother Janardan in February to tell him
about his interest in two Pune wrestlers, Muhammad Husein and Dole. He had,
he told his brother, asked Nanasaheb to arrange a fight between them, laying a
bet that Muhammad Hussein would throw Dole.67 As a boy, Narayanrao Ballal
spent much time at the house of Gopikabai, mother of Madhavrao peshwa, at
Gangapur. In early 1767, when he would have been 12, he asked Ballaji
Janardan in letter to send him a fresh supply of 10 spears, and also 10 bothati,
the bamboo sticks softened at the end with a ball of rags, used for lance exer
cise. He explained that many of his had gotten broken while he was out exer
cising.68 Nandaram bin Bhavani was a wrestler employed to help him in his
practice while he was away from Pune. Narayanrao wrote to Nana Phadnis to
say that the wrestler was coming to Pune for a family wedding, and asked him
to arrange an allowance for the wrestler during his stay.69
Gopikabai showed a particular interest in the education of the boys of the
family, reminding Savai Madhavrao in 1783 that he should go to the gymna
sium every day, and take 4 or 5 other boys along for company, together with
one or two jetti to show them the wrestling throws.70 Savai Madhavrao contin
ued his interests in wrestling. In December 1786, a visitor, Moro Appaji,
described a recent visit of jetti to Savai Madhavrao's court. Three jetti had
come from Karnataka, and stayed for two and a half months, eating a generous
65 Vasudev Krishna Bhave, Peshvekalin Maharashtra (Pune: Bharatiya Itihas Anusandhan

Parishad, 1976): 47.
66 Jadunath Sarkar, ^.Selections from the Peshwa Daftar (Bombay: Central Government
Press, 1930-3) vol. I: 10-1.
67 Sarkar, Selections from the Peshwa Daftar: 18, 33.
68 Ibid.: 25.
69 idem.
70 Bhave, Peshvekalin Maharashtra: 53.
allowance of food, to fight at the festival of Rangapanchmi. There had just been
another bout, at which two men from the local akhada, one Makhwa Gavali and
one Kallya Gavali, had killed two of the visiting wrestlers. Another jetti from
Karnataka had fought with a local man by name of Abaji Sutar, and had killed
him. Various other people were staging fights at the local akhada, and an
allowance was granted to another wrestler from Karnatak. After a few more
weeks, there would be further bouts.71 Even during the struggles of his final
years of rule, the last peshwa Bajirao II kept wrestlers at his gymnasium,
including the famous wrestler Guru Balambhatdada Deodhar, who was said to
have gone to Banaras to start up new akhadas in the city.72
Contemporary British observers also recorded the popularity of these sports
both among the sepoys of the Maratha armies, and as forms of amusement for
rural audiences. In the 1780s, James Forbes saw an exhibition of athletic exer
cises by two groups of opposed wrestlers to a crowd in the Konkan district. The
combatants were accompanied by "an old man who it seems was a celebrated
teacher of the gymnastic art, and received a pension from the Mahratta gov
ernment for that purpose," and were received with great respect by combatants
and spectators alike.73 One of the most closely observed accounts comes from
the British officer Colonel Broughton, who commanded the escort of the British
resident attached to the camp of the Maratha Daulatrao Shinde in 1809. Having
described Shinde's extensive patronage of wrestlers, Broughton recorded the
exercises that the sepoys in his army always turned to once the rainy season
had started, "which are regulated by certain ceremonials, observed with the
most scrupulous etiquette." The sepoys prepared the wrestling ground by
smoothing an area of ground, in the shade of trees if possible, which they held
sacred and kept from contamination by shoes and the like. Interestingly here,
the instructor was the most expert of the sepoys themselves who was "appointed
'Khuleefu', or superintendant, for the season," and oversaw the exercises of
"the young Put'has, or scholars." Having bound their waists up tightly with
their dhotis and rubbed the earth of the makeshift akhada over their bodies,
the sepoys exercised with deep knee-bends?repeated many hundred of times in
the case of the strongest men?and with heavy clubs and steel chain bows.
Broughton described the overall effects of these exercises: together, they "open
up the chest, set up the body and strengthen the muscles, and the effect pro
duced by them upon a young lad at the end of the season is astonishing."74
71 V. V. Khare, Aitihasik Lekha Samgraha (Pune: Aryabhushan Press, 1915): 4159-60.

72 Mujumdar, Encyclopedia: 21.
73 James Forbes, Oriental Memoirs (London: White, Cochrane and Co., 1813) vol. I: 203-4.
74 Thomas Duer Broughton, Letters Written in a Mahratta Camp during the Year 1809
(London: John Murray, 1813): 163-5.
HHEfe
Illustration 2: see footnote 75 below.75
This illustration, painted in Patna about 1830, very clearly shows the fusion
of wrestling practice and military preparation. The picture is of sepoy exercises
at a camp, set up under a tree, with what looks like a shrine in the background.
The artist has divided the picture into two halves, with spectators on each side
forming a natural arena. To the left, sepoys on a square of softened earth are
wrestling, with others around them exercising with the moves and instruments
we saw illustrated above: mogdur and gada clubs, the lezim chain bow, and
nala circular weights. More of these instruments appear in the foreground. At
the back, another man is stripped down and doing his sets of danda. The square
on the right is clearly dedicated to swordsmanship and cavalry drills. Watched
by the spectators, a man with what may be a patta or straight sword seems
to be waiting to practice on something that his partner is just placing on, or
picking up, from the ground. The right half of the picture suggests the presence
of horses alongside the sword exercises. In the foreground fari gadka, sharp
ended lances and the blunt ended bothati are laid out. The men who wear short
75 Victoria and Albert Museum, "Indian Sports: Wrestling, Weight-Lifting, Archery and
Sword Play" Patna c. 1830, 03533 (IS). V and A Images/Victoria and Albert Museum,
London.
military jackets are depicted with their pantaloons grubby with marks of the
saddle and with smear marks made at the waist, as if from the wiping of sweaty
hands. Others are undressed, waiting their turns.
Military Sports and "Demilitarization" in the Early Company State
Thus even in these early stages of colonial demilitarization, martial expertises

continued to enjoy a widespread popularity. While visiting the camp of the
Hyderabad ruler in 1791, W. Ouseley remarked on the attentiveness of local
men to their bodies, "which they are very careful to render smooth and shining;
and in order to supple their limbs and give grace and strength to their bodies,
they make use of violent exercises within the house, with dumb bells, or heavy
pieces of wood, which they whirl about the head, so as to open the chest and
strengthen the arm, which may account for their being such excellent swords
men." Interestingly, however, Ouseley also described the decline of these exer
cises as preparation for military employment amongst some local families, who
"having no horses to ride, nor any military character to sustain, are ashamed to
carry spears and other arms, and think it needless to perform exercises they will
not be called upon to practise."76
Mrs Meer Hassan Ali, wife of a Muslim servant of the East India Company,
noted the continued prominence of these exercises amongst Muslim boys in Lucknow
during the 1820s. They used heavy clubs "brandished in various ways over the
head, crossed behind, and back again, with great ease and rapidity by those with
whom the art has become familiar by long use." These young men held that
this practice was indispensable for effective swordsmanship. "The young men
who are solicitous to wield the sabre with effect and grace, declare this prac
tice to be of the greatest service to them in their sword exercise: they go so far
as to say, that they only use the sword well who have practiced the moghdur
for several years." Use of the lance was "practiced by young men of good fam
ily as an exercise; and by the common people, as the means of rendering them
eligible to the Native military service of India." Though it was much less used
as a weapon of defence than in former times, "all practise the use of the bow,
as they fancy it opens the chest and gives ease and grace to the figure."77 The
continued wide social diffusion of these military cultures emerges in an inter
76 W. Ouseley, "Extract of a Journal and Memorandum Written during a Tour in the

Nizam's Country in the Month of November 1791." Oriental Collections (London: Cooper
and Graham, 1797-1800) vol. I: 101-2.
77 Mrs Meer Hassan Ali, Observations on the Mussulmauns of India, ed. W. Crooke
(London: Humphrey Milford, 1917): 17-9.
esting and rather different way in Bishop Heber's narrative of his journey
through Gujarat in the mid 1820s. Heber's well-known account is punctuated
with descriptions both of the heavily armed populations that he encountered on
his journey, and of the many different local military men he met who were
looking for employment. The dress of the young men of the Koli fishing com
munity and their variety of weapons struck him in particular. They wore
a quilted cotton kirtle or 'lebada', over which they wear a shirt of mail, with braces and
gauntlets, and never consider themselves as fit to go abroad without a sword, buckler,
bow and arrows, to which their horsemen add a long spear and battle axe. The cotton
lebada is generally stained and iron-moulded by the mailshirt, and as might be expected,
these marks, being tokens of their martial occupations, are reckoned honourable, inso
much that their young warriors often counterfeit them with oil or soot, and do their best
to get rid as soon as possible of the burgher-like whiteness of a new dress.78
For these young Koli men, honorable military service continued to carry
significant status even if, as Heber so often remarked, many of them now strug
gled to find seasonal military employment of the kind previously available
through the military labor markets of Northern and central India.
The East India Company's army naturally formed the primary arena where
this culture of wrestling exercise and military practice continued. Recruited into
the Bengal Army in 1812, the soldier sepoy Sita Ram recorded that as a boy in
his village he "did very little else than learn to wrestle or play with sword
sticks" to the detriment of the family farm.79 Interestingly, he recalled the par
ticipation of the British captain of his company in these exercises: "He was six
feet three inches in height, his chest like Hunooman's, and when in the akhara
(wrestling arena) he was the universal admiration of all the men. He had learnt
all the penchs (throws) and no sepoy could ever overcome him. This officer was
always known among ourselves as Pulwan Saheb."80
Writing in the early 1830s, the military aide-de camp G. C. Mundy watched
the sepoys of Skinner's Horse doing their exercises in Cuttack. Having seen the
lancers practicing wheeling and charging, his party went on to a garden in
the cool of the evening to watch the "athletic and gladiatorial performances" of
the sepoys of the 39th Infantry. "The games were opened by the sword-players,
who, as well as the wrestlers, were entirely naked, with the exception of a cloth
bound tightly around the waist and reaching a few inches down the thighs."
Sepoy wrestlers came next. These, he recalled, "understand the mechanical
78 Reginald Heber, Narrative of a Journey Through the Upper Provinces of India in 1824-5
(London: John Murray, 1843) vol. II: 107.
79 Sita Ram, From Sepoy to Subedar: Being the Life and Adventures of Subedar Sita Ram,
A Native Officer of the Bengal Army, ed. James Lunt. (London: Macmillan, 1978): 4.
80 Ibid.: 14-5.
application of their strength better than any British wrestlers that I have seen.
The legs were brought much more into play; and at the commencement of the
bouts, when the combatants were fresh, the falls were dreadfully heavy." Mundy
was also struck by "the great similarity of make in the several sepoys who con
tended?the chief peculiarities being the immense expansion of chest, breadth
of shoulder, flatness and hollowness of back, and extreme smallness of waist."81
The young ensign Captain Bellew, writing at about the same time, recalled how
the sepoys in his company stopped under a banyan tree near the town of Farrukhabad
on their march to Delhi, to play with what was clearly fari gadka, leather cov
ered sticks and small shields or targets. "A rapid and animated exchange of
blows now took place, accompanied by the most agile bounds and movements;
most of the blows rattled on the targets; head and shoulders, nevertheless, came
in for an ample share of ugly hits."82 The sepoys of the Company's army car
ried this sporting culture with them when they served abroad. Sepoys serving in
Java in 1815, who developed close ties with the Surakarta royalty, had a spe
cial place at the court for their archery practice, and the king would come down
in the evenings to watch their gymnastic displays.83
In subsequent decades, and particularly after its post-Mutiny restructuring,
these military sports were to establish themselves firmly within the colonial
Indian army. Tent-pegging, contests between lancers, wrestling, gymnastics, dis
plays of skill with swords and clubs emerged as the institutionalized recreations
of its cavalry regiments, which were nostalgically recalled in countless British
memoirs of Indian military life. Regimental histories, such as those of the 45th
Rattrays' Sikhs, abound with accounts of the sporting displays of sepoys.84 Nor
were these displays simply ceremonial. Robert Baden Powell described the
extraordinary swordsmanship of Indian cavalrymen in Meerut at the end of the
nineteenth century, who practiced by cutting dead sheep in half, and whose
slashing moves were so deadly as to prompt the regiment to reinforce its stan
dard issue protective jackets.85
81 G. C. Mundy, Pen and Pencil Sketches: Being the Journal of a Tour in India (London:
John Murray, 1832): 319-22.
82 Captain Bellew, Memoirs of a Griffin (London: W. H. Allen, 1843): 350.
83 Peter Carey, "The Sepoy Conspiracy of 1815 in Java." Bijdragen tot de Taal-Land-en
Volkenkunde 133 (1977): 302.
84 Colonel H. St. G. M, McRae, Regimental History of the 45th Rattray's Sikhs (Glasgow:
Robert Maclehose and Co. Ltd, 1933): 292-4.
85 Robert Baden Powell, Indian Memories: Recollections of Soldiering and Sport (London:
Herbert Jenkins Ltd, 1916): 270-1.
military sports and the history of the martial body in india 517
Perspectives
Outside these military contexts, however, some contemporaries remarked on

the decline of these older expertises in some sections of the broader population.
As Abdul Halim Sharar lamented in his chronicle of Lucknow, the old culture
of aristocratic martial skills had collapsed. It was difficult in the early twentieth
century, he said, to find people who still remembered all of the different fight
ing techniques of earlier generations. "When I lift up my pen to describe these
arts, I can find scarcely anyone from whom I can get information."86 In rural
North India, British commentators remarked on a decline in wrestling skills,
outside the Indian Army's major recruiting ground of the Punjab. The Official
Handbook of the 1911 UP Exhibition at Allahabad, held as part of the cele
bration of the imperial visit of that year, noted the decline of wrestling in the
Province, "with the result that Punjab now provides all the first class wrestlers."
It added the hope that the displays scheduled as part of the Exhibition would
help revive popular interest.87 Descriptions of the popular sporting events held
as part of the celebrations noted that "competitors came chiefly from the Central
Punjab," many from the Jat regiments.88 The popularity of martial sports as a
form of rural recreation followed patterns of military recruitment, and as the
focus for recruitment shifted to colonial Punjab, so too did the popularity of the
sporting skills associated with military employment. For many rural people out
side these institutional settings, the contraction in opportunities for military employ
ment thus did not only cut off important sources of work and status. Demilitarization
dislocated what had been a connected set of marketable skills and bodily
proficiencies, offering at once a means to local status, a model for physical
strength and vitality, and an avenue to seasonal employment.
In other and particularly urban contexts, however, these military skills con
tinued to enjoy considerable popularity and were important features of recre
ation, neighborhood affiliation, and popular entertainment. The Muslim festival
of Mohurram, marking the martyrdom of the Prophet's grandson Iman Hussein,
was an important occasion for members of a gymnasium to demonstrate their
physical skills. Describing school life in Sylhet during the 1870s, Bipin Chandra
Pal recalled the "free fights between adherents of rival akhadas," as stronger
Muslim sections from the countryside arrived to trounce their weaker rivals
in the town?although he also remarked that these were very tame affairs in
86 Sharar, Lucknow: 109.

87 UP Exhibition Official Handbook. 1910-11: 244-5.
88 The Historical Record of the Imperial Visit to India, 1911. (London: John Murray,
1914): 186. I am extremely grateful to Carey Watt for this and the reference above.
comparison with the bloody contests that elderly people had told him about
when he was a boy.89 Battles between members of different neighborhood
akhadas feature in the local histories of North Indian towns, as described in the
work of Gyanendra Pandey.90 Other skills also continued to flourish in these
urban settings. Baden Powell described the great popularity of swordsmanship
in Meerut itself, which town boasted three separate schools for training and
practice.91 The Indian princely states also emerged as major patrons of wrest
ling; older professional fighters such as the jyeshtimallas could continue to find
patronage there, albeit of a more limited form and disconnected from a wider
culture of popular military preparation. Baroda, Kolhapur, Aundh, Patiala,
Jodhpur, and Miraj all supported teams of wrestling champions both within
India and, later, on the international circuits of wrestling.92
Wrestling also continued to attract popular interest and support in the old Maratha
stronghold of Poona, although contemporaries were aware that the sport needed
new methods to transmit its techniques. Sitaram Ballal Mahajan, a Poona
wrestling enthusiast, set himself to create an illustrated manual of wrestling
moves and techniques. He explained that the old craft of wrestling passed down
from teacher to pupil, or through the descriptions of wrestling moves in popu
lar episodes of the great epic of the Mahabharata. In the present day, however,
it was no longer effective to transmit the old skills in this way. If young peo
ple in high schools were to acquire them, and to gain once more the qualities
of shining good health, bravery, and self-confidence that these skills conferred,
an illustrated book had to be created that could be taken into schools and gym
nasia for the use of students. Mahajan added that publishing the work had been
a long struggle, but that he had enjoyed much support from local patrons. In
addition, some of those who had helped him to compile his compendium of
throws and exercises had learned their own craft from the great Poona wrestler
Balambhatdada in the days of the Peshwa, although some of these old men had
now died.93
From the point of view of these bodily expertises, then, "demilitarization"
was only a very partial phenomenon in the later colonial period. The continu
89 Bipin Chandra Pal, Memories of My Life and Times (New Delhi: UBS Publishers,
2004): 67-9. See also G. A. Herklots, Qanoon-e-Islam, or the Customs of the Moosulmans of
India, by Jaffur Shurreef (London: Parbury, Allen and Co, 1832): 145.
90 Gyanendra Pandey, "Encounters and Calamities: The History of a North Indian Qasba
in the Nineteenth Century." In Subaltern Studies, ed. Ranajit Guha, (Delhi: Oxford University
Press, 1984) vol. Ill: 231-70.
91 Baden Powell, Indian Memories: 270.
92 Alter, The Wrestler s Body: 75.
93 Sitaram Ballal Mahajan, Mallavidyaprakash (Poona: Jagadhitecchu Press, 1872): 2-4.
ing wide social diffusion of these sports in many urban contexts goes some way
to explain the volatility of local politics in colonial public spheres, and partic
ularly the speed with which local disputes often escalated into violence. For it
was precisely within these urban settings, as a number of historians have noted,
that older martial skills were recreated as the cultures of plebeian local strong
men.94 Nirad Chaudhuri described the physical culture clubs set up during the
swadeshi agitation of 1905, which represented just this blending of older skills
and new orientations. The societies themselves, he said, were modeled on the
gymnastic clubs set up in Prussia before the war of liberation against Napoleon,
and aimed to give training in patriotism, collective discipline, and the ethics of
nationalism. Interestingly, however, the local men employed to teach Chaudhuri
and his fellow students had their own readings of what "patriotism" might entail
in this context. The first teachers at the clubs, he recalled, had been the hered
itary Muslim retainers whom the local zamindars employed to do all their vio
lent work, and the craft was handed down from father to son. His own teacher,
however, was "an old but immensely powerful fisherman, Golak by name, who
was also in the habit of holding forth on the motive behind all this practice as
he understood the motive"?meaning, if Muslims attacked them, this was how
they would fight.95
There were also wider changes in the political significance of these military
sports. As many historians have noted, the martial body in its various forms?
of the wrestler, the gymnast, and the soldier monk?came to occupy center
place both in nationalist fears about Indian racial decline and in reformist pro
grams for national and racial self-strengthening.96 Within these new political
frameworks, India's regional political elites and religious reformers moved from
the later nineteenth century to try to "recover" these older cultures of the martial
94 See, for example, Sandria Freitag, Collective Action and Community: Public Arenas
and the Emergence of Communalism in North India (Berkeley and Los Angeles: Cali
fornia University Press, 1989): 120-3; Nita Kumar, The Artisans of Banaras: Popular
Culture and Identity, 1880-1986 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988): 111-124;
Nandini Gooptu, The Politics of the Urban Poor in Early Twentieth Century North India
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001): 214-221; Shahid Amin, Event, Metaphor,
Memory: Chauri Chaura 1922-1992 (Berkeley and Los Angeles, California University Press,
1995): 123-5.
95 Nirad C. Chaudhuri, The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian (London: Macmillan and
Co. Ltd., 1951): 245-50.
96 For a recent discussion of these programs, see Carey Watt, Serving the Nation: Cultures
of Service, Association and Citizenship (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2005): 130-71,
and Harald Fischer-Tine, Der Gurukul-Kangri oder die Erziehung der Arya-Nation: Kolonialismus,
Hindureform und ilnationale Bildung" in Britisch-Indien (1897-1922) (Wurzburg: Ergon
Press, 2003) and also John Rosselli, "The Self-image of Effeteness: Physical Education and
Nationalism in Nineteenth Century Bengal." Past and Present 86 (1980): 121-48.
body. In these later colonial political settings, martial physical culture was no
longer a means to a honorable individual livelihood, or a part of a widely diffused
cultural knowledge, or even simply a part of private urban leisure. Rather, the pro
grams of the Hindu Mela or the Arya Samaj?aimed at "national" regeneration?
were top-down regimens to be inculcated by new political elites on what was
assumed to be a passive population whose health was understood in increas
ingly racial and communal terms.
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O Hanlon 2007 - Military Sports and The History of The Martial Body in India

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Military Sports and the History of the Martial Body in India

Author(s): Rosalind O'Hanlon

Keywords: body, military, wrestling, demilitarization, Indian sports

Martial Cultures in Indian History: Recent Approaches

* Faculty of Oriental Studies, University of Oxford, rosalind.ohanlon@orinst.ox.ac.uk

? Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2007 JESHO 50,4

military brokers and entrepreneurs to recruit bodies of professionally-trained

Dimensions of Martial Cultures in India

Before going on to look in more detail at the development of different kinds

11 Jos Gommans, "Warhorse and Post-Nomadic Empire in Asia, c. 1000-1800." Journal of

12 Stewart Gordon, "Zones of Military Entrepreneurship in India, 1500-1700." In Gordon,

M?M?A. i^. A & J ISL nJ1>

/jck fi y\^ jp# yJ Si ?>

Illustration 1: see footnote 17 below17

15 Alavi, The Sepoys and the Company: 13-7.

This illustration shows a scene of archery practice featuring different types

was metaphorically represented as a body made up of different limbs. Central

21 Kolff, Naukar, Rajput and Sepoy: 29-31.

28 Ibid.: 212-4; Irvine, Army of the Indian Moghuls: 229-43.

Martial Physical Culture in Early Modern Settings:

An important question in this setting concerns the transmission of these bod

32 Irvine, Army of the Indian Moghuls: 185.

particular, it includes a more extensive discussion of battle arrays than earlier

47 Sandesara and Mehta, Mallapurana: 8.

Military Sports in Court Settings

Many contemporary accounts of early modern courts suggest a wide circula

It is particularly interesting in this context that the Telugu didactic poem?

50 R. Sewell, A Forgotten Empire (London: Allen and Unwin, 1924): 249-50.

51 K. A. Nilakanta Sastri and N. Venkataramanayya, Further Sources of Vijayanagara

54 Sastri and Venkataramanayya, Further Sources of Vijayanagara History: 111-2. I am

57 Abu'l Fazl, A'in-i Akbari, i, a'in-i piyadagan: 189.

Martial Specialists and Military Cultures at the Maratha Courts

65 Vasudev Krishna Bhave, Peshvekalin Maharashtra (Pune: Bharatiya Itihas Anusandhan

71 V. V. Khare, Aitihasik Lekha Samgraha (Pune: Aryabhushan Press, 1915): 4159-60.

Illustration 2: see footnote 75 below.75

Military Sports and "Demilitarization" in the Early Company State

Thus even in these early stages of colonial demilitarization, martial expertises

76 W. Ouseley, "Extract of a Journal and Memorandum Written during a Tour in the

Outside these military contexts, however, some contemporaries remarked on

86 Sharar, Lucknow: 109.

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