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About the Book: The German Sanskrit philologist and teacher Gustav Oppert (1836-1908) worked for the greater part of his life in British India, as a professor in the Presidency College of Madras (now Chennai) and as a curator in the Government Oriental Manuscripts Library. This 1880 book considers, 'with special reference to gunpowder and firearms', the weaponry of the Hindu armies of the Middle Ages. Oppert uses two main sources, the Nitiprakasika and the Sukraniti, the former 'up to now, utterly unknown', the latter having never been 'properly described and published'. Unfortunately, the Sukraniti is now believed to be a nineteenth-century document (though drawing on older sources), and Oppert's claim that gunpowder was being used in India in the twelfth century is probably untenable. Nevertheless, the work remains an interesting study of the size, organisation and weapons of Hindu fighting forces, from bows and arrows to elephants, as well as the more anachronistic firearms. About the Author: Gustav Solomon Oppert, (30 July 1836 – 1 March 1908) was a German Indologist and Sanskritist. He was a professor of Sanskrit and Comparative Philology, Presidency College, Madras, a Telugu translator to government, and a curator in the Government Oriental Manuscripts Library. He was a professor in Madras from 1872 to 1893. He was also editor of the Madras Journal of Literature and Science from 1878 to 1882. After traveling in north India from 1893 to 1894, he returned to Europe in 1894.Oppert was born in Hamburg on 30 July 1836 and counted Julius Oppert and Ernst Oppert among his eleven siblings. He obtained a PhD in 1860, having attended four universities - Bonn, Leipzig, Berlin and Halle - and in 1866 became an assistant librarian at the Bodleian Library in Oxford, England. He also took a similar post at Windsor Castle for Queen Victoria. Oppert's significant writings are On the classification of languages (1879), On the weapons, army, organisation and Political Maxims of the ancient Hindoos (1880), Lists of Sanskrit manuscripts in Southern India (2 Vol. 1880-1885), Contributions to the history of Southern India (1882), and On the original inhabitants of Bharatavarsha of India (1893). Oppert, who was unmarried and childless, died in Berlin on 1 March 1908. He was buried there at the Weissensee Jewish cemetery.