Looking through the quiz from Venkat, I was beginning to wonder, what could have been the difference between the armies of the muslim raiders and Indian & Tamil kingdoms? Where were technically or numerically disadvantaged or did we simply not grow with the rest of the world, inspite of having such long contacts with the rest of the world through commerce & trade? Or simply the raiders were huge in number and continuation of petty fights that simply ruined the fight? Pandyas & chera were related to the Sinhalese kings, did they not get enough support from them? I am just wondering aloud.. Any thoughts?
May be we were(are) not ruthless/brutal like them. The codes of Tamil warrirors like don't kill women and children, don't hit at the back may had a negative impact for the our ancient warriors. The fight between the neibouring kingdoms was the major drawback india had IMO. But is it not surprising with the similar kind of cultural and lingual diversity european countries flourished like anything without having much of a fight among themselfs(????? i am dull with european history).
the first major muslim invasion was around 1314 ad
at that time the cholas had been extinguished and the pandyas ruled from two capitals madurai and cannanore( samaya puram)
there was a great fight between two pandya broithers.
if you ask the weapons of both the muslim and hindu armies were the same. it was that the muslim army had the support of the rebels and natural enemies of the country thast they were attacking that mattered. in this caser sundara pandya and the hoysalas under vir bhallaala helped malik attack madurai.
Malik's incursion into the south was resisted by the kakatiyas of warrangal, the yadavas of deogiri and hoysalas. malik conquered all of them in different ways. but in a way he was focussed. he never wanted to rule the lands he conquered but only used them as stepping stones for further conquest. there were reports that he wanted to use the pandya kingdom as a spring board for a naval expedition to srilanka
kafur was only after gold. the delhi sultanate was regularly attacked by mongols from central asia and had to maintain a huge army. the gold that was conquered from the south atleast served one purpose. it helped stop mongols at the gates of delhi.
another thing that helped malik take madurai was speed. he found absolutely no resistance till the gates of madurai. that was mainly because the pandyas had exterminated almost all dynasties including the cholas.
Man is essentially an animal only more refined. Fight from day 1 is the norm. Europe is no exception. There were fights between greece and sparta. Romans invaded other countries. While we should thank the european renaissance for many of the present day cultures, the fight among them continues till day. The first and second world wars left death and destruction among the european countries besides fall out elsewhere.Among the european union itself there is always an ego clash between england and france who are sworn foes (in subcosciousness too) and the story continues. After all europe is a tiny fraction of the entire world!
I am also august at the brutality of our tamil kings who will hold aloft the head of the defeated king on the tower as a mark of victory.Even then there were poets who saw reason and moderated them somewhat. But let us not examine them with the present day standards. What was the code and fashion of today will be dispised as brutal tomorrow. But the eternal values enshired in our books of Virtue endure for eternity such as TIRUKKURAL. And there lies their charm. Illaya? yours sincerely, d.seshadri
An interesting fact told by an IIT Professor in another group related to this topic(hopefully).
a bit of history :
In the 9/10th century a few ministers to the king of northern India ( fore fathers of the pritiviraj-samyukda) proposed to build a strong wall, completely closing the kiber pass.( something similar to the the great wall of china) .
The ministers advised the kind to levy a special "wall tax" on the people for the construction.
But the people agitated and refused to pay the "wall tax". After some time, the tax proposal and the wall project was dropped.
Many years after drooping the proposal Ghajini Mohammed was planning to visit india and found the kiber pass to be the effortless way to enter. He succeeded and looted all the wealth and returned .
He used that route to repeatedly visit india in the 9th/10th century. In a span of 20 years he made a total of 17 visits. Not even once he failed. Every time he went back with tones and tonne of gold snatched from the public.
When the brilliant ministers proposed to completely close the kiber pass by building a strong wall, all the people should have contributed immediately and should have completed it .
unlike the thousands of kilometer length of the great wall of china, this wall needed to be just a few kilometres long . The money and effort needed to build the wall was not even point one percent of what was lost for not contributing the construction of the wall.
The morel of the story : Contribute for the right common cause. ( btw this is not a story. this is a recorded history of india)
khyber pass I think is on a range of mountains called hindu kush. named meaning " killer of hindus"
whether it was the indian invader they meant or indian slaves is still a bone of contention.
no wall however big can be a deterent to a determined invader. even the chinese great wall was crossed several times, not by demolition or assault but by simple bribery.
the last time an army crossed it was in 1644, when the Manchus crossed the Wall by convincing an important chinese general Wu Sangui to open the gates of Shanhai Pass and allow the Manchus to cross. Legend has it that it took three days for the Manchu armies to pass. After the Manchu conquered China, the Wall was of no strategic value, mainly because the Manchu extended their political control on either side of it.
warrangal fort had two surrounding walls. the middle space had ponds and rice fields. so a siege could last indefinitely. but malik conquered it using fire arrows. arrows with tips of a concoction of camel dung, plant fibre and coal dust where the fire would not be put off was used on the rice field which were ripe and dry.
yesterday's question of whether the muslim invaders were different .my answer would be one man was different. malik kafur. but or him still the muslims would have come but a century or so later. regareds venketesh
Sir, I beg to differ here, Hoysalas and Chalukyas were always interferring with someone or the other. Hoysalas have supported cholas against pandiyas and again vice-versa also and Chalukyas were supporting Pandyas and Cholas against Pallavas. Pallavas internal fighting brought about the chola empire, vijaylaya supporting one brother against the other. Muslims were allowed to come in the same way by the Pandyas, who had outlived every other dynasty by that time.
Pandyas had began their infighting during the time of cholas(Vira rajendra aiding and fighting Veera Pandian and Vikrama Pandiyan along with Sinhala Dantanayaka & Jagatvijayan. Singala Karunkasu introduced into Pandiya territory at this time). My other question is why Muslim raider, why did they not involve the Sinhala kings, being related to them??
"warrangal fort had two surrounding walls. the middle space had ponds and rice fields. so a siege could last indefinitely. but malik conquered it using fire arrows. arrows with tips of a concoction of camel dung, plant fibre and coal dust where the fire would not be put off was used on the rice field which were ripe and dry"
During the crusades, the muslim defenders were using naptha(sticky fire) on the siege weapons of the crusading europeans. A simply but deadly concotion, that sticks and burns out the entire siege weapon, rendering them useless.
the pandyas were at logger heads with the sinhalas during 1290-1310
parakrama bahu the sinhala king was in the forest waging a guerilla battle.
a group of generals called ariyan chakravattis were ruling the lands of lanka on behalf of the pandyas.( they later declared independence)
the sinhalas had great reason to hate the pandyas. first kulasekharans brother vikrama and his illegitimate son veerapandiya whipped them in the battlefield.
the latter( thought to have) taken the most precious treasure of the sinhalas- buddha's tooth from the hill fortress of abhaya giri back to madurai.
the ransom was peace and parakramabahu came all the way to madurai to beg for it.
the second time the tooth was taken away was by the goan portugese in 1610.
allies or not, malik would have come to madurai anyway. he had fought tougher battles earlier and this wouldnt have dettered him. the support of hoysalas and sundara pandya was incidental. infact because sundara was accompanying malik made veerapandya the pandyan king run away without offering resistance.
actually malik being a hindu convert and a eunuch had to have frequent victories to ensure his position in the delhi court.
the pandyas had a mini civil war( not the huge one in the earlier century) just a few decades before malik came.
two brothers were pitted against each other. kulasekaran the king and vikrama his brother and the commander of the forces in lanka.
vikrama was hugely popular with the army and a shaken kulasekaran had to seek the support of the chera. vikrama lost, and was exiled. but to keep him quiet his daughter was married off to the chera king. the system worked perfectly.
when kulasekara was murdered by his legitimate son sundara there was some more strife. veera pandya his illegitimate son took on sundara chased him out and ruled madurai for quite some years.
sundara met malik when malik had already crossed hoysala territory.( thiruvannamalai?) it is assumed by many that sundara went all the way to delhi to request help which is now considered wrong.
after the first defeat by muslims vikrama pandya came back from exile he joined with his grand son the chera king's son and attacked madurai. he was repulsed in a rare show of unity between veera and sundara. then their history becomes obscure.
when ulugh( thuklak) came in 1320 he defeats and kills a pandya king called parakrama.most possibly belonged to the next generation.