The first gunpowder and firearms used in India were neither invented nor manufactured by the Hindus: they were imported during the Middle Ages from the West. The guns of Upper India entered through Afghanistan; those of Western India were brought by ships. Let us consider the latter first.
“If any reliance is to be placed on Moulla Daud Bidury, the author of Tohfutu-s Salutin,” says General Briggs, “guns were used (in 1368) by the Hindus (of Bijanagar), and in a subsequent passage (Ferishta remarks) that the Muhammadans used them for the first time during the next campaign. But I am disposed to doubt the validity of both these statements.... Ferishta ... also observes that Turks and Europeans skilled in gunnery worked the artillery. That guns were in common use before the arrival of the Portuguese in India in 1498, seems certain from the mention of Faria y Sousa.”[252]
The first observation suggested by this passage is, that Ferishta does not say the Hindus had guns on this occasion; he says they had عرابه (’arábah),[253] a word which originally meant a cart. In the early days of field artillery the guns were carried in carts,[254] from which they were taken and laid on trestles when required for use. Wheeled gun-carriages only came into general use in Europe during the reign of Louis XI. of France (1461-83).[255] Things followed the same course in India, and the word ’arába thus came in time to have two meanings; most arába being simply carts, some being (so to speak) gun-carriages. Then later writers arose who insisted that all ’arába were gun-carriages at the early date of 1368, because some ’arába were gun-carriages in and after 1526. Ferishta (who died about 1611) fell into the trap, and after him fell several modern historians.
Secondly, General Briggs’ conclusion about guns in India before 1498 seems somewhat unguarded. It is beyond dispute that firearms were used on the west coast of India during the last quarter of the fifteenth century, but the evidence we possess points to the conclusion that they belonged almost exclusively to Arab and Portuguese ships. The fact that Captain Cook cruised on the coast of Otaheite in 1769 in a ship equipped with firearms, does not warrant the conclusion that the natives possessed firearms. Ferishta was writing about events which took place two hundred years before he was born, and there is a particular reason for doubting the existence of firearms in Bijanagar at this early period.
In 1441 ’Abd ur-Razzak, who had been sent to India by Shah Rukh on an embassy to Calicut, visited Bijanagar, whose ruins may still be seen on the banks of the Tumbhadra. He has given us a full and amusing account of what he saw, bursting forth into poetry on the ugliness of the natives:—
“I have loved a moon-faced beauty,
But I cannot fall in love with every black woman.”[256]
He was present at the great review held during the festival of Mahanawi, when “the number of people and the huge elephants resembled the green sea and the myriads which will appear on the Plains of the Resurrection.” Not an allusion is made to firearms, although he notices the naphtha-throwers mounted on elephants.[257]
Ferishta tells us that in the year 887 A.H. (A.D. 1482), Mahmoud Shah Begurra of Gujarat, hearing that Cambay was likely to be raided by the pirates of Bulsar, collected a fleet containing “a force of gunners, musketeers, and archers,” and defeated them. On this passage General Briggs remarks: “This is the first mention of artillery and musketry in the Gujarat history. They were probably introduced by the Arabs and Turks from the Red Sea and Persian Gulf.”[258] The firearms that came from the Persian Gulf must have been few and far between. Writing in 1549, a Jesuit says: “The Persians use no bombards or arms of this kind.”[259]
There is no mention of the Bulsar expedition in the “History of Gujarat,” by Ali Muhammad Khan, translated by Mr. J. Bird.