Day 355: India Unbound

The bazaars and palaces of Punjab had been filled with talk ever since Alexander made the Persian Empire vanish four years before. The princes of India had shivered when they heard that Persepolis had been set on fire. But the India that Alexander faced was not united. Even Punjab, guarding the northwest gateway, was divided between three major kings and dozens of free tribes who were constantly at war. Their inability to unite lost them four years during which they could have planned for Alexander.

Alexander crossed the Indus near Attock and reached the kingdom of Taxila, between the Indus and Jhelum (Hydaspes) rivers. Ambhi, the king of Taxila, from prudence or cowardice, chose not to fight. He sent Alexander envoys and presents and offered him his army, provided his kingdom was spared. Ambhi warmly welcomed the Greek invader and threw open the gates to his city, long famous as a center of trading and learning. The inquisitive crowds in Taxila watched the strange Greek figures in curious dress who milled about their streets.

Smaller chiefs from the surrounding areas brought presents, and Alexander rewarded them with generous extensions of their territories and vessels of gold and silver. The Greek soldiers performed games and sacrifices before the awestruck citizens. The Greeks were impressed by the civilized city life within the mud-brick maze of Indian streets. They visited the university and the learned men. They watched the rich townsfolk go about in linen tunics, capes, and turbans, their beards dyed white, blue, red, and purple. Some carried umbrellas, others wore leather boots. Holy men blessed the passersby by smearing their foreheads with oil.

Puru watched Alexander from across the Jhelum River. He observed the traitorous alliance struck by Ambhi, his old enemy. He saw the other princes rapidly submit to the new power, including his own Paurava kinsmen. He realized that he was up against huge odds, and he had to fight or surrender. When Alexander’s envoys came to summon him to Taxila, Puru replied that he could meet another king only as an equal. War became inevitable and the stage was set for one of Alexander’s greatest battles.

Alexander’s army soon marched towards the Jhelum, accompanied by Taxila’s forces. When they reached the river and saw Puru’s hundred elephants massed on the other bank, the Macedonian cavalry became frightened. Not having faced elephants before, the Greeks feared them as soldiers feared the Patton tank in recent times. Behind the elephants stood a thousand chariots and Puru’s forty thousand infantry. Although different figures are given about the relative strength of the two forces, they were more or less equal, with Alexander’s cavalry superior in numbers. Alexander quickly realized that a direct crossing would be impossible. Meanwhile, the river began to rise, as the snows melted early in the Himalayas. Heavy rain and storms made the river swell further. Puru’s spies brought news that Alexander had ordered vast quantities of grain, and since nothing seemed to happen for days, Puru concluded that the invasion had been put off for several months, till after the monsoons.

One morning at dawn, Puru was stunned to learn that boats filled with horses had crossed twenty miles up the river. Concealed by the torrential downpour Alexander had quietly moved a third of his army upstream. He had chosen this point because it was hidden from the other side of the bank by a wooded island. As the rain abated, Alexander and his cavalry crossed in the first light of dawn. A single narrow boat carried history—the king himself with his great captains, who would one day rule vast parts of the world: Ptolemy, the future king of Egypt; Lysimachus, the future king of Thrace; Perdiccas, the future regent; and Seleucus, who would inherit Alexander’s vast Asian empire. However, they had not reached the other shore. They were still on the island, which a swollen channel had completely cut off from the eastern shore after the rains.

It was here that Puru’s outposts discovered the Greeks, who had to hurry to get across because Puru’s troops would arrive any moment. They found to their horror that the channel was not fordable: they were caught in a trap. They made desperate efforts at various points, at all of which the water was too deep. In that moment of panic, Alexander reassured his men that they were doing all this for the sake of glory—one day the people of Athens would talk and write about them. Eventually, they found a spot where the water was only waist-high and the men and horses struggled through.

When Puru heard that the enemy had crossed, he sent his son with a force of two thousand mounted men and 120 chariots. He did not send the bulk of his force because he did not believe that this was the main attack. Across the river, he saw the Macedonian phalanxes, the royal guard, and the Asiatic horsemen were in a state of readiness. As soon as Puru’s son reached the scene, he was greeted by a hail of arrows followed by squadron after squadron of the famous Macedonian horsemen. Soon they were overpowered. Four hundred cavalry fell fighting. All his 120 chariots were captured—most of them stuck in the mud, the charioteers dead.

When Puru heard of this, he realized that the final hour of decision had come. He turned his entire force upstream. He placed himself on the largest elephant, alongside the image of Indra. Puru was a giant of a man, and his troops took courage from the sight of their powerfully built leader with the banner of the warrior god. The battle began with the trumpeting of the elephants, which terrified the European horses. Alexander’s thousand mounted archers from Central Asia began to hail arrows upon the Indian left flank. The Indian archers responded, but the rain made it impossible to get a firm rest for their longer bows. When the Indian cavalry began a wheeling movement on the left wing, Alexander’s horse guard charged upon them from the right. The Indian cavalry found itself outnumbered by the Greek cavalry, which had the experience of a hundred battles. Finding that they now had the upper hand, the Greeks sprang a surprise attack from the rear. Puru’s infantry was thrown into confusion. The elephants, pushed back from the front, were now hemmed in from behind. Under stress, they caused a stampede on their own men. Resistance became hopeless; butchery followed. Meanwhile, the balance of Alexander’s forces crossed the river, including two fresh Macedonian phalanxes, and they completed the rout. In the end, Alexander’s superior cavalry had decided the battle. Among the thousands who died that bloody day were two sons of Puru and a brave neighboring prince.

Puru himself, unlike the king of Persia, did not flee nor surrender. Despite the losing battle, he kept fighting and goading his men to keep their honor. Alexander’s forces were impressed, by both his size and his courage. It was only when he was hit by a dart on his right shoulder that, wounded and tired, he turned his elephant to safety. He had not gone far when he recognized the hated face of the traitor Ambhi. He turned around and hurled a lance with whatever strength his wounded arm could muster. Ambhi evaded it and turned back. Soon, two envoys from Alexander came up to him. Loss of blood had made him intolerably thirsty. He halted his elephant and got down. Alexander’s envoys honored him and gave him water to drink, and he commanded them to lead him to their king.

As Puru neared the Macedonian lines, Alexander came galloping out to meet him. He was filled with admiration for his brave and proud adversary and asked Puru how he wished to be treated. “Treat me, Alexander, as you would treat a king,” replied Puru. Alexander was confused and asked him to be more precise. “When I said ‘a king,’” repeated Puru, “everything was said.”

Alexander was pleased with the reply. He not only gave Puru back his kingdom but, much to Ambhi’s chagrin, enlarged Puru’s territory to all the lands towards the east. Thus, Puru accepted the Greek dominion and became Alexander’s faithful and energetic ally. Puru’s own people, like the Greeks, were also proud of their king. Alexander ordered a city of victory, Nicaea, to be built on the field of battle, and another at the gray spot on the opposite bank from where he had crossed the Jhelum that morning. He called the second Bucephala, after his great horse who had died that day. The Greeks then performed their sacrifices and athletic games before the admiring people of the Paurava kingdom. After this great battle of the Hydaspes River the Greeks marched on. When they reached the fifth river of Punjab, the Beas (Hyphasis in Greek), Alexander’s tired army refused to go further. He ordered and cajoled them, but it was to no avail. Disappointed, he turned back, somewhere near modern Gurdaspur.

Seven years later, all trace of Greek authority had disappeared from India. The chief reason was another romantic figure, Chandragupta, who was a lesser warrior but a greater ruler than Alexander. The young nobleman from Magadha, helped by his subtle, Machiavellian adviser, Chanakya, organized an army and overcame the Greek garrisons. He established the Mauryan Empire, which ruled north India and Afghanistan for 137 years.

At the end of this saga, the main question is, why did Puru lose and Alexander win? On the face of it, the invader’s superior strategy and the element of surprise clearly gave the Greeks a decisive edge. However, beneath the surface there were important differences between the two armies. Professor Stephen Rosen, the military historian from Harvard, has recently found the answer in the divisions in Indian society, which resulted in poor coordination in Puru’s army. Puru’s cavalry refused to aid the infantry. On the soggy banks of the Jhelum that morning, the Greek historian Arrian observed, Puru’s chariots got stuck and the charioteers were unwilling to double up as infantry. Later in the day, cohesion in the Indian army broke down as the Macedonian phalanx put pressure on Puru’s infantry, and the elephants pushed back and began to trample their own men. In this crisis, Rosen notes, “the Indian cavalry … did not assist the Indian infantry against the enemy phalanx but dealt as best as it could with the Macedonian cavalry.”

In contrast, Alexander’s army was a professional machine. Originally it had been, like Puru’s, a tribal militia. Neither was Greek society more cohesive, but Alexander had professionalized his army and separated it from the divisions in society. When Alexander’s cavalry first sighted Puru’s troops, their first instinct was to charge. Alexander, however, “checked the advance of his cavalry to allow his infantry to come up with him. Regiment by regiment, they made contact, moving swiftly until the whole force was again united.”

Indian military historians have also noted this aspect. Rosen attributes the lack of solidarity partially to the caste system, although he correctly points out that caste structures were not yet fully developed. Caste, he hypothesizes, divides society, encourages loyalty within the subgroup, and discourages it across caste lines. Puru’s upper-caste mounted cavalry did not sufficiently support the lower-caste soldier who was on foot. Jadunath Sarkar, an authority on ancient and medieval military affairs, said that although “the Indian defenders of the Punjab were brave, each man fought to death in isolation.” The soldiers were “unable to make a mass movement in concert with their brethren of other corps.” The people of Punjab were disunited and narrowly self-centered, with the net effect that “divided we fell.”

Puru may have lost to the greatest general of his time, but the theme of the poor teamwork runs throughout Indian history. Babur’s victories at Panipat and at Khanua (against the Rajput confederacy, led by Rana Sangha) were partly a result of the same deficiencies. Although the Marathas had more cohesive armies, they too suffered because some sub-castes armed themselves against others. The British Empire professionalized the Indian armies, however, and after 1947 the Indian military has been “an island of discipline.” Despite that, there have been problems between generals in the battlefield. In the 1962 Indo-Chinese war, the commander of the Fourth Division at Se-La confessed that “private animosities, personal weakness and in many cases lack of mutual confidence among the commanders … led to disaster.” Even in the victorious wars against Pakistan, in 1965 and 1971, there were major failures of coordination, according to Generals Harbaksh Singh and Sukhwant Singh.

~~India Unbound : From Independence to the Global Information Age -by- Gurcharan Das

Day 134: Book Excerpt: Alexander The Great

The retreat he inspired has always seemed sympathetic. Alexander’s eastern plans have not been well received by historians: many have argued that they never existed and some have maintained that all mentions of the Ganges, are best discarded as legend. Apart from the facts, these arguments assume that no sane man could have wished to go on; there are two sides to such a judgement, and only one finds its evidence in Greek accounts of the campaign. The kingdom of Magadha was powerful, certainly, but reports of its strength were no less fantastic than those of the legendary armies of Indian epic heroes, and however plentiful its elephants, it was passing through a painful old age. In native Jain tradition, Dhana Nanda, last of its kings, was long remembered as son of a common woman, born, therefore, outside the ruling caste and detested by many of his courtiers. In the epic book of Ceylon, he is said to have extorted heaps of gold from his subjects and hidden them, meanly, in the waters of the Ganges. Alexander, most remarkably, knew this perfectly well from his informants: Ksandrames, said Porus, was ‘merely the son of a barber’, and not only is a barber’s son a common Indian idiom for a feeble and low-born king, but it is exactly echoed in later Indian histories as a judgement on Dhana Nanda himself. The last of the Nanda dynasty had no firm hold on himself or on Magadha’s loyalties; like Cortes, Alexander had stood on the brink of an old civilization, rich but torn by internal discontent. The journey from the Beas to the Eastern Ocean would have lasted another three months down a royal road, and his officers knew it as clearly as he did. And yet they turned it down.

Only the future can prove what they missed. Within three years of Alexander’s death, a pretender arose in northern India, Chandragupta the Mauryan, who marshalled an army and made Magadha his own. Dhana Nanda was deposed, and ten years later Chandragupta was even pressing on the Punjab frontier, perhaps drawing help from its seditious highland tribesmen. In return for five hundred elephants, Alexander’s Asian successor Seleucus was forced to concede him the Indian provinces; Chandragupta returned to Palimbothra, where he heeded his minister Kautilya and ruled in state for another twenty years. Behind the wooden palisading of the palace he kept open court to Greek envoys, who would come by the royal road from Amritsar, admire his harem and stroll in gardens which seemed to have been his for a hundred years. When asked how he had done it, said the Greeks, Chandragupta would reply: ‘I watched Alexander when I was still a young man; Alexander,’ he explained, ‘had been within an ace of seizing India, because its king was so hated and despised, both for his character and his low birth.’

If an Indian imitator could do it, so too could his master ten years before: Dhana Nanda’s kingdom could have been set against itself and Alexander might yet have walked among Palimbothra’s peacocks, improved its fencing and enjoyed the fish-ponds on which the Indian princes had always learnt to sail. But not far from its gates the Ganges spreads into an estuary and glides beneath palm-trees through the banks of the silt-brown fields: it asks to be followed, and Alexander need only have done so for another six hundred miles, until he saw the sea-ehore opening before him and would have concluded, wrongly but poignantly, that at last he was near the edge of his world. The Eastern ocean was three months away, and the soldiers had refused it. The conquerer’s dream of the past few years was gone, when he knew too well that it could have come true.
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The retreat from the Beas was a disappointment, not a danger. The men were not so much embittered as exhausted; as for the officers, none of them plotted to take advantage of their king’s defeat. For defeat it was, and the disgrace would far outweigh the negligible fears in Alexander’s mind. He would not easily live with such a rebuff to his sense of glory, the heart of his Homeric values. He reached the Jhelum, only to find that Bucephala had been washed away by the rains; worse, news came from the ladies’ quarters that Roxane’s first baby had miscarried.

Only Porus benefited from the new despair. The ‘seven nations and two thousand towns’ between the Jhelum and the Beas were added to his kingdom; they had lost their interest now that the march to the east had been cancelled. There was only one direction left which promised Alexander his required adventure. It would be ignominious to retrace his steps through the Hindu Kush; now, therefore, was the moment to put the ship timber to use and explore southwards down the Jhelum to the river Indus. It was not the safest route home, but as a link between the conquests in east and west, this waterway might prove invaluable. Though Alexander had at last discovered from the natives that the Indus would not bring him round into the Nile and Upper Egypt he may well have preferred to keep up this hope among his weary troopers.

Back on the Jhelum more than 35,000 fresh soldiers from the west were waiting, raising the army’s strength to 120,000, a massive force by classical standards; they had also brought medical supplies and smart new suits of gold- and silver-plated armour. More important, they would raise morale. Eight hundred ships of various shapes and sizes were needed for the voyage down the Indus, but such was the energy of the newly equipped army that two months later the fleet was ready to be manned by the expert crews of Cypriots, Egyptians, Ionian Greeks and Phoenicians who had been following Alexander, as before they had followed the fortunes of the Persian kings. The journey downstream to the outer ocean could begin.

It is a commonplace of sermons and histories that powerful men are corrupted and pay for their licence by loneliness and growing insecurity. But in life, the wicked have a way of flourishing and not every despot ends more miserably than he began: power may turn a man’s head, but only the virtuous or the uninvolved insist that it must always cost him his soul. Inevitably, with Alexander this moral problem begins to be raised: thwarted, did he lose his judgement and turn on the methods of a textbook tyrant in his i solation? Failure will often show in a general’s style of leadership: he may no longer delegate his work, while refusing to take the blame for its consequences: he may be too exhausted to take a firm decision, too unsure to resist the meanest suspicions. It is only a legend that when Alexander heard from his philosopher Anaxarchus of the infinite number of possible worlds, he wept, reflected that he had not even conquered the one he knew. The need to justify a lost ambition can cause a man to over-reach; moralists, at least, might expect that Alexander’s first rebuff from his army would mark the loosening of his grip on reality.

History does not confirm that this was so. As no officer describes the mood of the king in council, it is impossible, as always, to divide the credit for the army’s actions between Alexander and his staff. Events, however, do not suggest autocracy or nervous indecision. Within two months, the entire fleet had been built from the felled timber, a tribute to the energy of officers and carpenters, and Alexander declared the enterprise open in characteristic style. After athletic games and musical competitions, he ordered animals for sacrifice to be given free to each platoon, ...

~~Alexander The Great -by- Robin Lane Fox