Uploaded by MILITARY HISTORY 2015. The Military History of Ancient Japan and Ancient India. In 1160 Japan’s two greatest clans fought a war of annihilation. The way of the Samurai was a path of honour or death, a strict code of unswerving loyalty.
The vastness of the Mauryan army of India was a sight to behold. Enlisting every source of manpower, the army was composed of 600,000 infantry, 30,000 cavalry and 9,000 elephants.
Samurai starts at 00:10
Samurai, usually referred to in Japanese as bushi or buke, were the military nobility of medieval and early-modern Japan.
Maurya Empire starts at 24:50
The Maurya Empire was a geographically extensive Iron Age historical power in ancient India, ruled by the Mauryan dynasty from 322 to 185 BCE.
Much of what we know of ancient history is the history of militaries: their conquests, their movements, and their technological innovations. There are many reasons for this. Kingdoms and empires, the central units of control in the ancient world, could only be maintained through military force. Due to limited agricultural ability, there were relatively few areas that could support large communities, so fighting was common.
Weapons and armor, designed to be sturdy, tended to last longer than other artifacts, and thus a great deal of surviving artifacts recovered tend to fall in this category as they are more likely to survive. Weapons and armor were also mass-produced to a scale that makes them quite plentiful throughout history, and thus more likely to be found in archaeological digs. .