Witching The World With Noble Horsemanship

1. Witching The World With Noble Horsemanship

As this book emanates from India the following may be permissible. The Turcoman was well established in Balkh and Badakshan including Ferghana in northern Afghanistan around 2500 or more years ago. The area considered was a part of ancient Bactria and Sogdiana, later Khorasan. Turcomans were imported into India for racing and these animals would have been largely from Balkh and Badakshan. But much earlier, about the turn of the 10th century, the success of invaders such as Mahmud of Ghazni was due to first-rate cavalry using high-blooded Turcoman horses when the superbly mounted Afghan cavalry made of the fighting an unequal affair, the Indian commanders relying more on war elephants. Much the same thing happened in early Arab-Persian conflicts when Arab horsemen cut down the elephants of the Persians and their riders. Later, the Mughals also brought into India Turcoman horses. All this is not to deny the place of the Arab of the Nedjd desert in India but is for the purpose of drawing attention to the Turcomans place in this countrys history. With regard to cavalry versus opponents mounted on war elephants it is worthy of note that certainly by the eleventh century haute ecole riding in combat in India
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Witching The World With Noble Horsemanship

included the capriole and the courbette when a horseman was able to use his lance effectively against an enemy high up in an armoured howdah. I excerpt from my book THE RED BAND OF COURAGEs Chapter 6. Chetak which deals with the Battle of Haldighati, 1576 :
We now come to Rana Prataps attack on Man Singh. As a matter of interest the Rana carried two swords in twin scabbards lest a swordblade broke in combat. As with slash and thrust Pratap forced his way to alongside that great tusker, he sprang his Chetak up and alongside the howdah in the udaan (capriole) and thrust at Man Singh with his lance. The Rana believed he had scored but Man Singh ducked and remained untouched. As Chetak landed, Pratap turned him 180 degrees in the tourbillon with the elephant wheeling too when this horse sprang up in the courbette to have his hooves drum on that war elephants head while Pratap cut down the mahout even as that great tusker wheeled and fled. Man Singh leaped from the howdah on to the charging elephants neck and freely using the ankush, hanging from a string, brought the panicstricken beast under control. If Pratap had then killed Man Singh very likely the Moghul forces, then hard pressed in spite of their numerical superiority, would have broken and fled. But it was not to be. As the Imperial Army seemed to give way Mihtar Khan, commanding the Moghul reserve troops, rushed to the field with kettledrums beating and proclaiming that Akbar himself had reached the scene. This rallied the fleeing troops and the tide of battle turned with the Moghul artillery deciding the day. Rana Pratap was surrounded by Man Singhs men when Jhala Man Singh of Badi Sadri snatched the royal umbrella, the Ranas standard, and fighting his way to a better defensive position
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drew the fighting towards him. Jhala Man Singh was to die presently, fighting bravely to the end. The Rana did not want to leave but on Hakim Khan Suris and Jhala Man Singhs pleadings that Mewar needed him, he fled the field.

The attack on Man Singh. Note the elephantlike armour on Chetaks head. We now come to the fantastic story of Prataps steed Chetak. In all this fighting Chetaks off-hind had been slashed through at the fetlock joint and there were below it no pastern, no hoof. It may be taken that this occurred when he jumped up partially on to the head of Man Singhs elephant in the courbette by the sword wielded by that
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animals trunk. This wonderful horse carried his master in flight on three legs. High School circus riding does include the canter on three legs, but the leg in the air is a foreleg. Deer, say, with a crippling wound in a hindleg do manage to leap away, but such animals carry no burden. Here was Chetak, his rider in armour, the horse wearing armour, flying over the roughest of terrain and outdistancing two Moghul chieftains hard on the heels of this royal pair, for surely Chetak must himself be termed royal. Shakti Singh, Prataps half-brother who fought on Akbars side, was there in the thick of the fighting and saw what was happening. He had a sudden change of heart and himself raced after the two Moghul captains. Up towards Haldi Ghati, some 6 km distant, flew Chetak, losing blood rapidly. At that time, more than four hundred years ago, a torrent tumbled down the pass. Coming to it Chetak gathered himself for that last, great leap to be taken as all leaps are taken by a horse, off one hindleg. He cleared that torrent and then falling, his life blood ebbing away, he died, his head cradled in his masters arms. Shakti Singh, hot in pursuit, came up to the two Moghul horsemen checked by that torrent. Valiantly he slew both of them and leaping the torrent gave his own mount to Pratap to continue his flight while he took off Chetaks accoutrements. The Rana lived to fight Akbar more or less successfully and at his death in 1597 Pratap had reoccupied the whole of Mewar except Chittor, Mandalgarh, and Ajmer and he was even able to attack Malpura, only 55 miles from Jaipur, and sack it. The altar at Haldi Ghati, the Chetak Chabutra, stands in mute testimony to this tale of a horse which must raise a lump in the throat of a horseman.
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Witching The World With Noble Horsemanship

Chetak dies

Shades of Eugene of Savoys cavaliers and their histrionics at Blenheim! The following lines from Tawneys translation The Ocean of Story of the Sanskrit Katha Sarit Sagara circa 1070 AD by Somadeva being from Sir George Griersons Foreword to Vol.II may, though a digression, be of interest:Kabutri arched her brown neck free, And they rushed at the Chauhan men; But where her master dealt with three, The mare she smote down ten. For with teeth she tore and her heels she flang, That she made a passage wide, And each howda she passed, in air she sprang, That her lord might reach the side.
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Witching The World With Noble Horsemanship

In bygone days when a Rajput princess was to marry, a swayamvara was held where her princely suitors assembled at her fathers Court and she chose her husband from amongst them. The princess sat on a balcony overlooking the palace courtyard. Each suitor in turn rode into the courtyard from under the archway of the palace gate leaping his horse high in the capriole when he struck with his sword a shield hanging up above. When the girl had chosen, she descended and garlanded the object of her choice. One might wonder how the girl put in order of preference valour and horsemanship, handsomeness, and royal position! Considering the ethos of the Rajputni of the day, valour and horsemanship surely decided the matter. India came to be a natural Mecca for horsemen horses, blood-horses, in mind-boggling numbers. For example, Feroz Shah could raise a cavalry force of 900,000 mounted on blood-horses only Arabians, Turcomans, and mixtures of these two strains in the main. Indian horsemanship was on a higher level than even that of the Mameluke horsemen under the Mameluke Sultans of Egypt with their hippodromes, polo grounds, and racecourses galore near Cairo for India had not only the airs on the ground known to the Mamelukes but also the airs above the ground for attacks on opponents mounted on war elephants.

Witching The World With Noble Horsemanship

The airs de manege which came into being in postmediaeval Europe had their origins in mounted warfare. While the airs above the ground related to an attack by a horseman on an opponent mounted on a war elephant did have a place in early Indian warfare, these airs can hardly be related to post-mediaeval European mounted combat. That these airs have a place in the Spanish Riding School of Vienna immediately raises the question how they came to be there. We know that in early Arab-Persian conflicts the Persians used war elephants imported from India whose riders were cut down by Arab horsemen. Could it be that the courbette, the croupade, the ballotade, and the capriole, and also the piaffer linked with them and hence the passage too, found their way to Vienna from India via the Arab invasion of North Africa, Spain, and parts of France, that is eventually from Spain to Lipizza to Vienna ?

The daughter of the King of Kannauj was to marry and a swayamvara was held, but she had set her heart on the gallant last of the Chauhan kings of Tomara, in the Delhi region, Prithviraja III who was her fathers enemy. The King of Kannauj failed to invite him to the swayamvara and in order to insult him placed his statue in the position of a doorkeeper just inside the palace courtyard gate. The princess rejecting the assembled princes placed the garland around the statues neck while at that very moment Prithviraja bounded under the
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archway with drawn sword when his so beauteous chestnut Turcoman-Arab mare even while stopping on her haunches went into the piaffer and flew high nigh horizontally in the capriole with Prithvirajas sabre clashing on the shield and even as horse and rider were grounding the sword was sheathed with the rider leaning down as mount and man landed to sweep the girl by the waist across his saddle bow, and wheeling disappear through the archway into the distance. Alas! The kings and his brides happiness was short lived. Muhammad Ghauri invaded from the north-west. Prithviraja was defeated in battle, captured, blinded, taken in chains to Ghauri and decapitated when a tower was raised over his head.

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