Y I Patel wrote:
There are two tendencies to Indian armies - unwillingness for forward deployment to NW areas,
how many of the empires that were being attacked by invaders from central asia showed an willingness to deploy to the 'NW areas' ? iran ? arab caliphates ? china ?
most of the reasons that applied to them also applied to Indian kingdoms, economics, terrain, climate, nature of enemy. and then there was the extremely important factor of horses which has been dealt with in some detail in this thread but you have chosen to ignore it.
why was the british empire, russians or US reluctant to deploy in the NW areas ? (they did but not with much enthusiasm and want to get out as soon as possible)
do you think we can conclude from that they all have/had conscript armies ?
and necessity for king to be present to rally troops
kings and generals fought on the frontlines right upto the gunpowder age. it has nothing to do with conscript or professional army.
alexander took far more risks fighting in the thick of the action during his campaigns, many historians express surprise that he survived for as long as he did. was he trying to lift the sagging morale of an untrained conscript army ?
napoleon too had dozens of close shaves.
even those kings who were too old to fight had to be close to the action to keep track of the battle and to issue orders.
Indian generals or kings did not fight in the frontlines any more than their counterparts. take for example the fact that ghori was injured fighting in the first battle of tarain, clearly he was on the frontlines being visible to his men. a general in those days had to be seen slogging it out alongside his men, there is nothing else to it.
The latter is why Hemu, Rama Raya, Raja Ram (Panipat III) needed to be present during decisive battles and the battle was lost when they fell - the conscripts had no more reason to continue the fight, and they just melted away.
they were not conscripts, which is about the point of my last post.
you are confusing between a conscript army and a loose alliance made up of disparate contingents, some contributions from friendly kings, some mercenaries, brought together by the personal influence of one person, the monarch or general. obviously, such an army would scatter if that person dies. that doesn't mean the soldiers themselves were conscript levies forced to fight. they were volunteer soldiers in their respective kingdom's armies.
I wrote an explanation of soldier recruitment earlier in this thread
http://forums.bharat-rakshak.com/viewto ... 4#p1105944
I always felt that both these tendencies were because the ruler had to raise a conscript army to meet the invader. Not something that would be particular to India either. So I am not sure that India never had peasant levies.
the explanation is a little far fetched when simpler ones exist. why India didn't have compulsory levy is simple to understand, population. throughout recorded history it was always one of the top 2 populous nations. even a small percentage of population volunteering would produce a very large army.