The Mathura Massacre: Blood in the Yamuna & The Apocalypse (February 22, 1757)

Marathi History Book Reading Session Summary

⚠️ CONTENT WARNING ⚠️

This session covers extreme violence, genocide, and war crimes. The historical accounts describe mass murder, torture, and atrocities on a massive scale. Reader discretion advised.

The Setup

After Vallabhgarh

Who Escaped:

• Jawahar Singh (via Kizilbad disguise + tunnel)
• Antaji Mankeshwar (Maratha commander)
• Samsher Bahadur (Bajirao I's son from Mastani)
• Few other important people

Current Status:

• Leadership survived
• But Mathura completely unprotected
• No military force remaining
• Pilgrims and civilians trapped
• Jahan Khan's army has free run

February 22, 1757: The Day the Blood Flowed

The Unprotected City

Why Mathura Had No Defense:

• Religious pilgrimage site
• In Awadh Kingdom or Mughal Kingdom (Muslim rule)
• Area already "pacified" by Abdali forces
• No military garrison
• No fortifications
• Just temples and pilgrims
• Left completely unprotected

The Orders: Total Freedom to Kill

Jahan Khan's Command

What He Told His Army:

"I give you full freedom to do whatever you want with the inhabitants of Mathura. Kill them, rob, steal, whatever."

Translation:

• No rules
• No restraint
• No mercy
• Complete license to commit atrocities
• Carte blanche for genocide

THE MASSACRE BEGINS

The Celebration of Horror

What Many Authors Wrote:

"The Afghan army celebrated the Festival of Holi with the blood of the inhabitants of Mathura."

The Sarcasm:

• Holi = Festival of colors (red, yellow, etc.)
• They "celebrated Holi" = Made everything red with blood
• Darkly sarcastic way to describe massacre
• Well-documented by multiple historians
• A "well-known event"

The Yamuna Runs Red

The River of Blood

For One Whole Week:

• The water in the Yamuna was red
• Soaked with blood
• From bank to bank
• Continuous red color
• For seven days

Then:

• Water turned yellow (पीत)
• Had a yellowish tinge (छटा)
• From decomposition
• From the sheer volume of bodies

The Suicides

Women's Desperate Escape

What Happened:

• Many women committed suicide in the Yamuna
• Drowned themselves in the river
• Rather than face capture

Why:

• Afraid of getting raped
• Afraid of being killed after torture
• Afraid of being taken as slaves
• Death was better than what awaited

The Head Count

The Macabre Inventory

What Was Found:

• Children's beheaded heads
• Piled up in different heaps throughout the city
• In every shop
• In every house
• At least one dead body lying

The Payment:

• Every head = 5 rupees (note: earlier it was 8 rupees)
• Financial incentive for murder
• Systematic genocide as business

The Non-Combatants

Who Was Killed

The Victims:

1. Bhairagis - Ascetic sect of Hinduism, wanderers
2. Sanyasis - Those who gave up material life
   • No marriage
   • No children
   • No material happiness
   • Completely devoted to spiritual life
3. Pilgrims - Visiting the holy site
4. Civilians - Regular inhabitants
5. Children - Even infants beheaded

Why They Were There:

• Mathura is a major religious site
• People come for religious rites
• Sanyasis lived in small huts
• All non-combatants
• None were soldiers

The Desecration

The Cow + Human Head Display

The Insult:

• In huts where sanyasis lived
• Their head bound with a cow's head
• Tied together
• Left on display

Why This Was Done:

• Cow is worshipped in Hinduism
• Sacred animal
• Afghans wanted to insult them
• Mock their religion
• Desecrate what they held holy
• Maximum humiliation even in death

The Night Raids

A Muslim Eyewitness Account

What He Described:

The Departure (Midnight):

• Assailants left their tents at midnight
• Each cavalry person took 10-12 horses
• Horses chained together - one's reins tied to next horse's tail
• Long chain of horses

Why So Many Horses:

• To carry back the loot
• To transport slaves
• To bring back heads (proof of payment)

The Return (After Sunrise):

• Came back after dawn
• Out all night
• Systematic overnight looting

The Haul

What They Brought Back

On Every Horse:

1. Loot - Valuables and items
2. Girls - For slavery or marriage
3. Slaves - To be sold in marketplaces

The Slave Trade:

• Would fetch money
• Could be exported anywhere
• Middle East, other regions
• Sold like commodities

The Girls:

• Could be sold
• Could be married off
• Human trafficking
• Property to be traded

THE HEADS

The Sacks of Proof

The System:

"Just like you have grains stored in sacks, there were heads tied up in cloth sacks and brought back."

Who Carried Them:

• Slaves carried the sacks
• On their own heads
• Following the horses
• Or ahead of them

The Irony:

• Slaves carrying heads
• Those heads would earn their captors money
• Soon they too would be killed and beheaded
• Their heads would also be payment

The Towers of Heads

The Monuments to Horror

What They Built:

• Towers made of beheaded heads
• In open grounds
• In open areas
• Public displays
• Like monuments

The Purpose:

• Show the scale of killing
• Terrorize survivors
• Display their "achievement"
• Proof of genocide

The View:

"Like when the whole world is destroyed... apocalyptic view."

The Fate of the Slaves

Used Then Killed

The Work:

• Made to pulverize grain
• Used ज़ातो (zato) - two stones for grinding
• Put grain between stones
• Rotate upper plate
• Hard labor
• No machines in those days

Why This Work:

• Armies need to eat
• Need to process grain
• Slaves do the hard labor
• No pay, just work until death

The End:

• After they finished the work
• They were beheaded
• "Because they were slaves anyway"
• Get money for their heads too
• 5 rupees per head

The Evil Logic:

• Use them for labor
• Then kill them for money
• Double profit
• Complete dehumanization

The Extent of Destruction

From Mathura to Agra

The Sequence:

"This was ongoing until they reached Agra"

Translation:

• Same pattern repeated
• All the way to Agra (north of Mathura)
• Entire region devastated
• Days of continuous massacre

Why They Did This

The Strategic Purpose

Make an Example:

• Mathura = Very highly revered religious site
• Attack the holiest place
• "This is what we will do to you"
• Show what happens to resistance
• Break Hindu spirit completely

Response to Maratha Hegemony:

• Marathas were running North Indian politics
• This was huge pushback against that
• "Drive them south"
• Eliminate their influence
• Marathas were Hindus - attack Hindu sites

The Streets

Too Much Blood to Walk

What It Looked Like:

• So many corpses on the streets
• So much blood flowing
• Difficult to walk on the streets
• Bodies everywhere
• Blood pools

The Smell:

• Stench was unbearable
• Couldn't open your mouth
• Couldn't take a breath normally
• Everyone walking had to keep handkerchief on mouth
• Careful how they breathed

The Headless Bodies

The Count

What Someone Saw:

• Counted 200 corpses
• None of them had any head
• All beheaded
• Heads taken for payment
• Bodies left to rot

Timeline

Key Players

The Scale

The Numbers

Known Facts:

• Week of blood in Yamuna
• 200 headless bodies (just one count)
• Multiple towers of heads
• Every house/shop = at least 1 body
• Thousands killed (exact number unknown)
• Entire population of religious site

The Comparison:

• One of the worst massacres in Indian history
• Comparable to worst genocides worldwide
• Systematic, organized, incentivized killing
• Week-long continuous slaughter

The Payment System

The Economics of Genocide

The Structure:

• 5 rupees per head (some accounts say 8)
• Bring proof = get paid
• More kills = more money
• Competition among soldiers

Why This Made It Worse:

• Turned murder into profit
• Created incentive to maximize killing
• Made it systematic, not random
• Businesslike approach to genocide
• Even children worth money

The Double Profit:

• Loot the living
• Get paid for killing them
• Use slaves for labor
• Get paid for killing slaves
• Maximum extraction of value from human life

The Religious Dimension

The Targets

Who Was Killed:

• At holiest Hindu site
• Pilgrims doing religious rites
• Sanyasis devoted to spiritual life
• Bhairagis (ascetic wanderers)
• All non-combatants
• All religiously significant

The Desecration:

• Cow heads + human heads tied together
• Mockery of Hindu beliefs
• Deliberate insult
• Not just killing - destroying faith

The Message:

"Your gods can't protect you. Your holy sites mean nothing. We will destroy everything you hold sacred."

Key Themes

1. Systematic Genocide - Organized, incentivized, businesslike killing
2. The Payment System - Money per head turns massacre into profit
3. Religious Targeting - Deliberate attack on holiest Hindu site
4. Total Freedom to Kill - No rules, no restraint, complete license
5. Desecration - Not just killing, but insulting religion
6. The Yamuna Runs Red - Week of blood, then yellow
7. Women's Suicide - Death preferred to capture
8. Children Not Spared - Even infants beheaded
9. Apocalyptic Scale - Described as end-of-world scene
10. The Slave Cycle - Use for labor, then kill for payment

The Eyewitness Accounts

Why We Know This

Multiple Sources:

• Many authors wrote about it
• Muslim eyewitness left account
• Well-documented event
• "Well-known" massacre
• Historical consensus

The Muslim Witness:

• Part of Afghan army
• Saw the night raids
• Described the system
• Left detailed account
• Shows it wasn't hidden - was open, systematic

The Purpose

Why This Level of Brutality

Strategic Goals:

1. Terror - Make an example so extreme no one dares resist
2. Religious War - Attack Hindu faith centers
3. Break Maratha Power - They were running the North
4. Send a Message - "This is what happens"
5. Profit - Loot + payment for heads
6. Jihad Justification - "Kafirs have no value"

The Calculation:

Attack the holiest site. Make it the most brutal. Use maximum terror. Break their spirit completely. Make it so horrific they'll never resist again.

The Aftermath: When Pune Learned

The Realization

What the Reading Says:

"After this, when the news came to Pune, there was a realization in the Marathas that this has to be stopped. It's game on now. It's serious."

Why This Changed Everything:

1. Scale unprecedented - Never happened like this before
2. Holiest site - Can't ignore destruction of Mathura
3. Hired to protect - Marathas were paid to protect North India
4. Beyond looting - This was genocide

The Response:

• "They're going to have to stand up"
• "Send an army"
• But doesn't happen right away
• Takes time to mobilize
• Abdali will likely return before they can respond
• Or go back temporarily

The Shock:

• "This was shocking to everyone"
• Even hardened warriors were horrified
• The scale, the brutality, the targeting

The Path to Panipat

Why This Matters

This Event:

• Made Panipat inevitable
• Marathas couldn't ignore this
• Had to respond with full force
• Not about politics anymore
• About survival and honor

The Timeline:

• Massacre: February 1757
• News reaches Pune: Weeks/months later
• Mobilization: More months
• Battle of Panipat: January 14, 1761
• Almost 4 years to prepare
• But the path was set here

The Comparison

Historical Context

Among World's Worst:

• Comparable to:
  • Worst medieval massacres
  • Mongol genocides
  • Other religious genocides
• Systematic, organized, documented
• Not random violence - planned genocide

In Indian History:

• One of the darkest chapters
• Up there with worst atrocities
• Well-remembered in collective memory
• Part of why Panipat mattered so much

The Geography of Horror

The Yamuna River

The Sacred River:

• Krishna crossed it as infant
• Banks are holy sites
• Pilgrims bathe in it
• Religiously significant

Now:

• Red with blood for a week
• Then yellow from decomposition
• Women drowning themselves in it
• Sacred river becomes death river

The Irony:

• River that saved infant Krishna
• Now filled with blood of his devotees
• At his birthplace
• Ultimate desecration

What Was Lost

Beyond the Dead

Human Cost:

• Thousands killed
• Women traumatized or killed
• Children murdered
• Families destroyed

Cultural Cost:

• Holiest site defiled
• Religious community devastated
• Temples damaged/destroyed
• Sacred space violated

Psychological Cost:

• Entire community traumatized
• Survivors scarred for life
• Fear spread throughout North India
• "If they can do this to Mathura..."

The Systematic Nature

Not Random Violence

The Organization:

1. Orders given - "Full freedom"
2. Payment system - 5-8 rupees per head
3. Night raids - Organized cavalry operations
4. Chains of horses - Efficient loot transport
5. Head collection - Proof of payment
6. Slave labor - Extract value before killing
7. Duration - Week-long operation
8. Expansion - Continue pattern to Agra

This Wasn't:

• Spontaneous riot
• Undisciplined looting
• Random violence

This Was:

• Planned genocide
• Organized operation
• Systematic killing
• Maximum profit extraction
• State-sponsored terrorism

The Horror in Detail

The Apocalyptic View

What Survivors Saw:

• Streets you couldn't walk on (blood and bodies)
• Air you couldn't breathe (stench)
• Towers of severed heads
• Handkerchiefs required to breathe
• 200 headless bodies (one count)
• Every house with a body
• River running red
• Children's heads in heaps
• Sanyasis with cow heads
• "Like the whole world is destroyed"

The Description:

"Apocalyptic view" - End of world scene

February 22, 1757: The holiest site in Northern Hinduism. "Full freedom to do whatever you want." The Yamuna runs red for seven days. Then turns yellow. Women drown themselves rather than be captured. Children's heads piled in heaps. Every house has a body. Sanyasis' heads tied with cow heads. Cavalry raids all night with chains of horses. Slaves carry sacks of severed heads. Towers of heads built in open grounds. 5 rupees per head. Use slaves for labor, then behead them for payment. So much blood you can't walk the streets. Stench so bad you can't breathe without a cloth. 200 headless bodies in one area alone. "Like when the whole world is destroyed." The massacre continues toward Agra. And when the news reaches Pune... "This has to be stopped. It's game on now. It's serious." The path to Panipat is set.

A Note on Historical Documentation

This massacre is well-documented by multiple contemporary sources, including Muslim chroniclers who were present with the Afghan forces. The accounts are consistent across sources, confirming both the scale and the systematic nature of the atrocities. This is not myth or exaggeration - this is documented history.

⚠️ END OF CONTENT WARNING ⚠️

This was one of the darkest chapters in Indian history, well-documented and historically verified. The Marathas' response to this would shape the next phase of the conflict, ultimately leading to the Third Battle of Panipat in 1761.