Page:Asoka - the Buddhist Emperor of India.djvu/14

12 the partition, admitting that he possessed no force adequate to remove the Râjâs to the east of the Indus, was obliged to recognize Omphis or Âmbhi, king of Taxila, and Pôros, Alexander's honoured opponent, as lords of the Panjâb, subject to a merely nominal dependence on the Macedonian power. Philippos, whom Alexander had made satrap of that province, was murdered by his mercenary troops early in B. C. 324, and Alexander, who heard the news in Karmania, was unable to do more than appoint an officer named Eudêmos to act as the colleague of King Âmbhi. Eudêmos managed to hold his ground for some time, but in or about B. C. 317 treacherously slew his Indian colleague, seized a hundred and twenty elephants, and with them and a considerable body of troops, marched off to help Eumenes in his struggle with Antipater. The departure of Eudêmos marks the final collapse of the Macedonian attempt to establish a Greek empire in India.

But several years before that event a new Indian