Akbar's military conquests - Page 4

Originally posted by: sashashyam

Splendid, Sandhya, my dearest girl! 👏

ThankYou Aunty

What a pleasant change from the endless arguments about our Terrible Trio! Thank you for compiling all this for us. And your interjections are either interesting or amusing or both.

Someone ought to show it to the CVs. Maybe then they will realise that their hero was a babbar sher, not Jodha Begum's housetrained pet Persian cat. A talking feline, whose mantra these days is Jodha Begum, aap bajah farmati hain/ theek hain.

It just might help make the show less diabetes-inducing and we can watch it without having to groan every 2 minutes.

As for Akbar the Great, like all great conquerors, battles must have given him a high. The remarkable thing about him was not so much that he was such a great conqueror, but that he was am equally great all round administrator, and that too without the advantage that his illustrious predecessor Chandragupta Maurya had, of having a Chanakya to guide him all his life. Or the inestimable one that Rajaraja Chozha had, a devoted, loyal, able and brilliant son. Akbar had a pain in the neck, Salim, in the whole latter part of his life, and two dipsomaniacs, Murad and Daniyal. What a crippling disappointment they must all have been!

His wives, select courtiers, Mansabdars and Rajput friends were his only loyalists. And he had to earn them all. It makes him greater. How wonderful it would have been if Salim had been half as good as Rajendra Chola!

One small point: After Jaimal and Patta failed to hold Chittor against Akbar, he ordered a general massacre of all the defenders. The figure of those killed is usually put at 40000. Akbar must have been furious at the fort having held out for so long, and his army must have suffered substantial losses as well. He must also have wanted to make an example of Chittor, and it must have worked, for Ranthambhore surrendered much more quickly.

I have never been able to understand this particular act of his, even as a political necessity or a personal ferocity. 😲

I wonder how Jodha Begum reacted to this wanton massacre of the brave defenders of Chittor.

I remember wanting to respond to your comment about Rajaraja some time back. The one who conquered South East Asia, mainly Kampuchea, was his son Rajendra Chozha, who was therefore called Kadalkadanta Chozhan (the Chola who crossed the seas). Also Gangaikonda Chozhan, because he led his army right up to the Ganga and brought her waters back for the tank of the temple he built at Gangaikondachozhapuram.

When I was doing my district training as an IFS probationer, I was driving from Chidambaram to some other place when, lo and behold, there was this gigantic, deserted temple by the roadside, with a huge vimana as tall as that of the Rajarajeswaram at Thanjavur. I was entranced, and we all trooped in and inspected it thoroughly. It had 16 foot square carved panels all round, and a huge lingam with the aavudayaar (the outer circle) having a circumference of 52 feet! I also remember that it was the only temple I have seen which had all the navagrahams on their backs, not seated upright. The temple had been eventually abandoned when lightning struck it and damaged the lingam.

The beautiful and touching detail about this temple is that though the vimana is really taller than that of the Rajarajeswaram, Rajendra had it built curved, so that the effective height was less than the 252 feet of the temple his father had built.

Incidentally, the Rajarajeswaram has a 25 foot square topstone on the vimana, that weighed 80 tons and was dragged to the top by using a ramp that was 4 miles long. The carvings, which had to be perfect according to the agamashastra, were done after it was put in place. The sculptors could not have afforded to make the slightest mistake, for there was no way they could have got that 80 ton stone down again!

Aunty, as I had said earlier I adore RajaRaja as much as Akbar. They were both great conquerors, excellent administrators, partons of art and literature and wonderful human beings. It was 'Ponniyin Selvan' that got my interest piqued in RajaRaja though I must admit that I adored the character of the loyal witty Vandhiythevan 😳 more than the perfect Emperor himself.

I haven't visited Gangaikonda Cholapuram temple, but have heard that it was built on the design of Rajarajeswaram. Is that too built of Granite? But the Periya Kovil is a fascinating one, - standing tall and magnificent even after 1000 years!

Shyamala Aunty