"Hindus could not, even in the wildest stretch of their imagination, conceive of a war that defied description. Until then, the code of war ethics that they had inherited since the Vedic period rested upon a rather tempered, three-tiered categorisation, given, for example, by Kalidasa50, which was later elucidated by the Kashmiri scholar, Vallabhadeva. The first was a Dharmavijayi, which refers to a conqueror who after defeating his enemy, allows him to rule the territory as before but exerts administrative control over him. The second was a Lobhavijayi—a conqueror who, after defeating his enemy, snatches both his territory and his treasury but spares the defeated king’s life. And the third was an Asuravijayi—a conqueror who not only grabs his vanquished enemy’s territory and treasury but puts him to death and takes his entire family, including women and children, as slaves. Needless to say, the Hindu tradition holds the Asuravijayi as the most despicable form of military victory."
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quoted in Balakrishna, S. Invaders and infidels: From Sindh to Delhi : the 500- year journey of Islamic invasions. New Delhi : BloomsBury, 2021.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Military_history_of_India
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Military history of India
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