Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 12.djvu/811

787 HISTORY.] INDIA 787 Chilianwala, 1 the Macedonian general crossed under shelter of a tempestuous night. The chariots hurried out by Porus stuck in the muddy bank of the river, and in the general en wement which followed his elephants refused to face the Greeks, and, wheeling round, trampled his own army under foot. His son fell early in the onset ; Porus him self fled wounded, but, on tendering his submission, was confirmed in his kingdom, and became the conqueror s trusted friend. Alexander built two memorial cities on the scene of his victory, Bucephalia on the west bank, near the modern Jalulpur, named after his beloved charger slain in the battle, and Ni?sea, the present Mong, on the east side of the river. Alexander advanced south-east through the kingdom of the younger Porus to Amritsar, and, after a sharp bend backward to the west, to fight the Cathuei at Sangala, he reached the Beas (Hyphasis). There, at a spot not far from the modern battlefield of Sobraon, he halted his victorious standards. 2 He had resolved to march to the Ganges ; but his troops were worn out by the heats of the Punjab summer, and their spirits broken by the hurricanes of the south-west monsoon. The native tribes had already risen in his rear, and the conqueror of the world was forced to turn back before he had crossed even the frontier province of India. The Sutlej, the eastern districts of the Punjab, and the mighty Jumna still lay between him and the Ganges. A single defeat might be fatal to his army ; if the battle on the Jhelum had not gone in his favour, not a Greek would have reached the Afghan side of the passes. Yielding at length to the clamour of his troops, he led them back to the Jhelum. He there embarked 8000 of them in boats previously prepared, and floated down the river; the remainder of his army marched in two divisions along the banks. The country was hostile, and the Greeks held only the land on which they encamped. At Miiltan (Mooltan), then as now the capital of the southern Punjab, he had to fight a pitched battle with the Malli, and was severely wounded in taking the city. His enraged troops put every soul within it to the sword. Farther down, near the confluence of the five rivers of the Punjab, he made a long halt, built a town, Alexandria, the modern Uchch, and received the submission of the neighbouring states. A Greek garrison and satrap, left there by Alexander, laid the foundation of a lasting influence. Having constructed a new fleet suitable for the greater rivers on which he was now to emb.irk, he proceeded southwards through Sind, and followed the course of the Indus until he reached the ocean. In the apex of the delta he founded a city Patala which remains to this day under the name of Hyderabad, the capital of Sind. 3 At the mouth of the Indus Alexander beheld for the first time the majestic phenomenon of the tides. One part of his army he shipped off under the command of Nearchus to coast along the Persian Gulf ; the other he himself led through southern Baluchistan and Persia to Susa, where, after terrible losses from want of water and famine on the march, he arrived in 325 B.C. During his two years campaign in the Punjab and Sind, Alexander captured no province, but he made alliances, founded cities, and planted garrisons. He had trans- 1 And about thirty miles south-west of Jhelum town. 2 The change in the course of the Sutlej has altered the old position of that river to the Beas at this point. The best small map of Alexander s route is No. V. in General Cunningham s Anc. Geog. of India, p. 104 (ed. 1871) 64 miles to the inch. 3 For its successive appearances in history, see General Cunning ham s Anc. Oeoy. of India, pp. 279-287, under Patala or Nirankot. He gives an excellent map of Alexander s campaign in Sind at p. 248. Patala (Pattala, Pitasila, or Pattale) was formerly identified with Thatha, a town near to where the western arm of the Indus bifurcates (M Crindle, Commerce and Navigation of the Erythraean Sea, p. 156, ed. 1879). ferrel much territory to chiefs and confederacies devoted to his cause ; every petty court had its Greek faction ; and the detachments which he left behind at various positions, from the Afghan frontier to the Beas, and from near the base of the Himalayas to the Sind delta, were visible pledges of his return. At Taxila (Deri-Shahan) and Nicaea (Mong) in the northern Punjab, at Alexandria (Uchch) in the southern Punjab, at Patala (Hyderabad) in Sind, and at other points along his route, he estab lished military settlements of Greeks or allies. A large body of his troops remained in Bactria ; and, in the parti tion of the empire which followed Alexander s death in 323 B.C., Bactria and India eventually fell to Seleucus Nicator, the founder of the Syrian monarchy. Meanwhile a new power had arisen in India. Among the Indian adventurers who thronged Alexander s camp in the Punjab, each with his plot for winning a kingdom or crushing a rival, Chandra Gupta, an exile from the Gangetic valley, seems to have played a somewhat ignominious part. He tried to tempt the wearied Greeks on the banks of the Beas with schemes of conquest in the rich south-eastern provinces ; but, having personally offended their leader, he had to fly the camp (326 B.C.). In the confused years Magadh; which followed, he managed, with the aid of plundering kingdon hordes, to form a kingdom on the ruins of the Nanda dynasty in Magadha, or Behar (316 B.C.). 4 He seized the capital, Pataliputra, the modern Patna, established himself firmly in the Gangetic valley, and compelled the north-western principalities, Greeks and natives alike, to acknowledge his suzerainty. 5 While, therefore, Seleucus was winning his way to the Syrian monarchy during the eleven years which followed Alexander s death, Chandra Gupta was building up an empire in northern India. Seleucus reigned in Syria from 312 to 280 B.C., Chandra Gupta in the Gangetic valley from 316 to 292 B.C. In 312 B.C. the power of both had been consolidated, and the two new sovereignties were soon brought face to face. In that year Seleucus, having recovered Babylon, pro ceeded to re-establish his authority in Bactria and the Punjab. In the latter province he found the Greek influence decayed. Alexander had left behind a mixed force of Greeks and Indians at Taxila. No sooner was he gone than the Indians rose and slew the Greek governor; the Macedonians massacred the Indians ; a new governor, sent by Alexander, murdered the friendly Punjab prince, Porus, and was himself driven out of the country by the advance of Chandra Gupta from the Gangetic valley. Seleucus, after a war with Chandra Gupta, determined to ally himself with the new power in India rather than to oppose it. In return for five hundred elephants, he ceded the Greek settlements in the Punjab and the Cabul valley, gave his daughter to Chandra Gupta in marriage, and stationed an ambassador, Megasthenes, at the Gangetic court (circa 306-298 B.C.). Chandra Gupta became familiar to the Greeks as Sandrocottus, king of the Prasii ; his capital, Pataliputra, or Patna, was rendered into Pali- bothra. On the other hand, the names of Greeks and kings of Grecian dynasties appear in the rock inscriptions; under Indian forms. 7 Megasthunes has left a life-like picture of the Indian people. Mega- Notwithstaudiii some striking errors, the observations which he stheues. jotted down at Patna, three hundred years before Christ, give as 4 Corpus Inscriptionum fndicarum, i. Pref. vii. 6 For the dynasty of Chandra Gupta see Numismata Oiienlalia (Ceylon fasciculus), pp. 41-50. 6 The modern Patna, or Pattana, means simply &quot;the city.&quot; For its identification with Pataliputrapura and Mr Ravenshaw s crucial dis coveries see General Cunningham s Anc. Geoy. India, p. 452 seq. 7 The Greeks as Yonas (Yavanas) are the laovts or lonians. In the 13th edict of Asoka five Greek princes appear: Antiochus (of Syria), Ptolemy (Philadelphus of Egypt), Antigonus (Gonatus of Macedou), Magas (of Cyrene), Alexander (II. of Epirus).