Ancient art of warfare is Indian military history goes back to the Indus or Harappan people who had prospered 5000 years ago. History of military fortifications in the country goes back even further. The Rig Veda contains huge amount of information about warfare and combats fought by the Aryans. The first recorded battle was the Dasrajan War, fought approximately in 1900 B.C., as a basis for reconstructing the strategy and tactics employed by the combatants. An exceptional and unusually applaudable fact about warfare in ancient India was its success in bringing about self-discipline and rules for a humanitarian conduct of war, many centuries before the rest of the world began to even think of such a dimension. And that compassionate warring art was perhaps most poignantly displayed with the Nayakas. To say that the Nayaka period is one of almost constant conflict and competition over resources is to state the obvious. The Nayakas had collapsed in the aftermath of the celebrated battle of January 1565, when the combined forces of the Deccan Sultans defeated an army led by Aravidu (Aliya) Rama Raya.

The spread of firearms: cannon, harquebus and matchlock (and later flintlock), in the early modern world is most certainly integrally linked to a wide variety of changes which occurred in that period. The delineation of warfare in ancient India proves to be a greater dilemma. While it is possible to treat northern India a part of a larger spread, embracing the Safavid state and the Ottoman Empire, southern India largely remains outside the scope of such a domain. Recent writings on the Mughal empire, such as a consideration concerning the reign of Akbar, do lay some stress on firearms as a factor in promoting territorial consolidation under these rulers. Usage of firearms was highly important in the Indian subcontinent; however it did not much come into vogue until the 18th century.

Majority of the historians tend to rely for the most part on indigenous chronicles and European narrative accounts, particularly those of seventeenth-century travellers like Francois Bernier and Jean-Baptiste Tavernier. However, in order to understand the impact of firearms on warfare in ancient India, it serves some usefulness to consider other literary materials and traditions as well. These literary materials actually demonstrate the nature and extent of the impact that the new weapons had on the mindsets of the age. The following kaifiyat description of a quintessential Nayaka-period engagement, being fought in southern Andhra and written in praise of one of the participants, the Telugu warrior-chief, Matla Ananta, in the 1580s or 1590s can be illustrated:

"Unshaken but the bags of gunpowder shooting fire into the skies, an uncontainable blaze, or by the flames and noise pouring from the tupaki guns, or by the rocks pouring down like torrential rain, or by the cannon shot echoing through the four quarters of the universe, you fought, winning praise from the Padushah and others."

The context here is a siege and was no coincidence. Several contemporary literary descriptions of sieges feature firearms in a prominent position in the circumstances of warfare in ancient India. This factor thus places the Nayaka concern in perfect perspective with impregnable fortified places such as Senji or Tiruchirappalli. Thus, once again, the early seventeenth century Tanjavur text, Raghnrathahhyudaya by Ramabhadramba, describes the Tanjavur Nayaka in his campaign against Colaga, chief of the fort of Devikottai at the mouth of the Kollidam river. Colaga, it is noted, was arrogant and confident. He was lucky enough to have his moat that almost resembled the deep ocean and hence was impregnable by others, even under the assistance of agniyantras (firearms). When the engagement with the Tanjavur forces began, Colaga`s men stood upon the battlements and stared at the targets in front of them, while firing off their agniyantras. The air was thus saturated with the thickness of smog and smoke.

Similarly, the Sahityaratnakara also renders a poignant description of the Tanjavur palace enclosure, which further underlines mode of warfare in ancient India. In the outermost courtyard of the palace enclosure, the Parasika (Portuguese) mercenaries, equipped with firearms (agniyantra), had their eyes rolling after drinking liquor, and `near whom the wind, loudly blowing through their metal agniyantras and filling the inner space, seemed to be proclaiming perpetually the imminent mission to destroy the armies of the King`s enemies.`

Even more generally, the courtly and other formal literature of the period suggests a deep fascination with firearms. To the literary sources just cited, numerous others can be appended: some of these deal with war, but others use firearms as a `poetic device` in diverse contexts. Turning to the scenes of war, besides the campaign against Colaga of Devikottai, the Tanjavur texts of the period of Raghunatha and Vijayaraghava often highlight the use of firearms. Warfare in ancient India thus describes Raghunatha`s campaigns of the 1620s against Jaffna. The poetess Ramabhadramba envisions the clever (patavah) soldiers of the king `making lightning-flashes with their agniyantras, as if from the clouds moving over the ocean`. She goes on to speak of how `they poured sparks of fire from the corners of their eyes, red with fury, and from the iron nalakas (cannon or muskets), at the enemies in front of them`. The latter is especially interesting, since it balances a conventional image: the blazing eyes of the inflamed warrior, against the nalakas and their effect. Time and again, ancient warfare in India cites the usage of agniyantra in its various forms.

A second level at which firearms enter literary perceptions in this period is through hunting scenes. These hunting scenes had become conventional in the Telugu court kavya from the period of Krishnadevaraya. They were then subsequently transplanted into the fertile soil of the Nayaka courts. At least one of the texts of this genre, the Vijayaraghavakaly-anamu of the poet Koneti Dikshitulu, which is set in the Tanjavur court in the seventeenth century, includes firearms (tupakulu) among the weapons carried to the hunt. It gradually becomes evident that firearms had become the latest fascination in warfare in ancient India, with the kings seeking every possible occasion to utilise them. In the hunting scenes context, the theory diverges from the earlier texts of the sixteenth century for the first time. However, firearms were used there not to kill animals, but to frighten them, so that they could be slain with more conventional weaponry, spear, net and sword. It is only with the early eighteenth century Tamil text, Kiilappanayakkan kataloi by Cupratipa Kavirayar, based in the town of Nilakottai in Ramnad, that the firearm (here kuntu tunrun kulat) is actually used to full effect. One tiger was slain with conventional weapons (that is, the velor - spear), but another, which proved more difficult, had to be overcome with a musket (kuntu kulal, from kuntu - bullet, and kulal - hollow pipe).