Name of tribes, kings, or cities. 3. Agrammes1 4. Sibi 2 Numerical strength of the armies. ... 5. Malli or Malloi3 ... 6. Sabracae 7. Agalassians " 8. Assakenoi 9. Androkottas Megasthenes, the Greek 2,000 four-horsed chariots and 10,000 3,000 or 4,000 elephants trained and equipped for war. (Curtius and Diodorus.) 40,000 foot-soldiers. 90,000 foot-soldiers, cavalry and 900 war chariots. 60,000 foot, 6,000 cavalry. 40,000 foot, and 3,000 horse. 30,000 infantry and 20,000 cavalry. 'Overran and subdued the whole of India with an army of 600,000 men. (Plutarch.) ambassador who visited the Maurya court sometime after the Seleukidan war, has left us an account of the various Indian races and has incidentally mentioned the numerical strength of their armies. The information gathered from this source is arranged in the following table: Name of the tribe, city, etc. 1. Calingae ... Numerical strength of the armies. 60,000 foot, 1,000 horsemen, and 700 elephants. 2. Molindae, Uberae and 50,000 foot, 4,000 cavalry and ⚫ Ibid, p. 234. Acc. to Diodorus, 80,000 foot, 10,000 horse and 700 chariots, p. 287. • Ibid, p. 252. Ibid, p. 285. J.A.S.B. (New Series), Vol. XIX, 1923, p. 367. Name of the tribe, city, etc. 4. Prasii Palibothra) Numerical strength of the armies. (capital 600,000 foot, 30,000 cavalry, 5. Automela (city) ... 6. Pandae 7. Gangaridae ... ... 9,000 elephants. 150,000 foot, 1606 elephants and 500 cavalry. 150,000 foot and 500 etephants. 60,000 foot, 1,000 horse and 700 elephants. The above facts cannot but be highly interesting to a student of Indian military science. The figures as we shall see, can also be of some use to the students of Indian Literature. Now let us consider the data supplied by the Mahābhārata. At the first glance the figures appear to be fictitious. But a closer study reveals that there is nothing inherently impossible in them and the figures at best are a bit exaggerated. We should bear in mind that the army of Dareius, the Achamaenian emperor, totalled a million men at Gaugamela, while coming nearer home and landing on solid historical facts we find Indian armies sometimes totalling more than 3,000,000 combatants. Major T. W. Haig has shown that the armies of the Vijaynagar kings even as late as the 16th century reached incredible figures. In 1399 Harihara II attempted to conquer the Raichar Duab with an army of 30,000 horse and 900,000 foot while in 1521 Krishnaraya put into the field an army of 50,000 cavalry and 600,000 infantry. In 1564 the army of Sadashivaraya is said to have amounted to in all 100,000 horse and 3,000,000 foot, with 2,000 elephants and 1,000 guns.' The reason why such huge number of combatants assembled at Kurukṣetra appears to have been owing to the fact that the conflict though immediately brought about by the family feuds of the Kauravas, was really a conflict of the nations where the pent-up feelings of ages found their final solution by 1 Haig, Historical Landmarks of the Deccan, pp. 108, 122 and 129-30. the argument of the sword. The janapadas were still tribal, where nearly every able-bodied man,—Brāhmaṇa, Kṣatriya, Vaisya or Sūdra was a soldier and unlike the later ages when kings or dynasties fought with their enemy kings or dynasties, tribes and nations fought with each other. This fact to some extent leads to the assemblage of larger forces of combatants. The last great war was a conflict of the nations and as a consequence the numerical strength of the allied and Germanic nations has passed all previous records. Next we come to the data supplied by the Rāmāyaṇa. There appears to be no doubt that the figures supplied by this epic is not only exaggerated but also highly fictitious. Armies continue to pour in the capital of Sugrīva whose numerical strength is measured not by thousands or by tens of thousand or by Kotis, i.e., hundreds of lacs (100,000) and very often the Rāmāyaṇakāra tells us, that the armies of individual Vanara chieftains amounted to 1,000 or even 2,000 kotis. The climax is reached when Angada leads an army of padmasahasreṇa vrtaḥ sankha satena ca,' i.e., 1000 × 10,000,000,000,000 (padma)+100 × 1,000,000,000 (sankha) combatants. Surely there is a limit to credibility, more so when we remember that Angada was only one amongst more than two dozen other generals. This tendency towards exaggeration and fanciful poetical flights are regarded by many as evidence of the comparative lateness of the Rāmāyaṇa. The figures supplied by the Jātaka stories and the classical historians can be accepted as historical. One interesting point that strikes us in this connection is the gradual decrease in the number of cavalry and the enormous increase in the number of infantry in Indian armies. In the Vessantara Jataka the number of the 4 sections of the Indian army was almost equal. The facts are supplied in the verse portion of the story and is therefore to be referred, most probably, to a period anterior to the 4th century B. C. Already in the time of Alexander the proportion has reached 1 (cavalry) to 10 (infantry), while in the time of the Mauryas the proportion is sometimes so low as 1 to 60. Another interesting fact is the gradual disappearance of the chariots from Indian armies. I have already drawn the attention of scholars on this point in my last chapter. It will be observed that while chariots in the time of Alexander still formed an important part of the Indian armies, in the time of the Mauryas, this unit probably began to disappear from the Indian armies and it is highly significant that the chariots, the brave car-fighters and their skilful sarathis are altogether omitted by Megasthenes when he gives us the figures of the Indian armies. Surely the car-warrior had fallen on evil days. The elephants however retained a position of importance in the Indian armies till the dawn of Moslem conquests in India. Laghumanasam of Munjala BY N. K. MAJUMDER, M.A. The object of this Paper is to give a brief account of Laghumanasam of Muñjala, a Karaṇa-Grantha. Authorship.-The Author of this small Treatise is Muñjāla, the celebrated astronomer of the 9th Century Saka, who is quoted by Bhaskaracharyya in connection with the Precession of Equinoxes. Bhaskaracharyya even accepts the rate of motion of the Equinoctial Points as given by Muñjala. Pd. Sudhakara Dvivedi also quotes a number of verses from some writings of Muñjala in Aryya metre about Precession and its rate. According to Muñjāla, Pd. Sudhakara Dvivedi says, Precession was nil at 434 Śāka. Manuscripts. The Calcutta University has been able to secure a very large number of Manuscripts of "Laghumānasam"-7 from Mysore, 1 from Cochin, 2 from Trivandrum, 11 from Madras, and 2 from Vizagapatam. These also include different and valuable commentaries, namely, by Prasastidhara, Yallaya, Suryyadeva Yajva and Parameswara, besides a Telugu Commentary. Of the 4 commentators, Suryyadeva and Parameswara are well-known as the Commentators of Aryyabhatiyam. Prasastid ha a seems to belong to the 9th Century Sāka (c. 880 Sāka), while Yallaya is said to be the son of Sridharacharyya and pupil of Suryyadeva. (See Dr. Kern's Edition of Aryyabhatiyam, Introduction, p. xi,) Subject. As already mentioned, Laghumānaṣām is a Karaṇa-Grantha and not a Siddhanta. It is composed in |