ALEXANDER AND THE LAND OF LEGENDS: INDIA
Alexander entered India in the summer of
327 BC. He like other Greeks, including his great tutor Aristotle believed that
beyond India there was only a great desert and then ocean. Although Persian
emperor Darius I captured India but Persian influence had long since ended when
he entered India. Alexander believed he was going to enter in a great land that
Dionysus, Heracles, and the legendary Assyrian queen Semiramis had failed to conquer.
He also believed that India was a land where cannibals and monstrous men and
animals lived, where cloth grew on trees, and ants mined gold.
By the end of 327, Alexander’s army
entered through the Khyber Pass to the plain of the Indus River in the summer. All
the resistance comes to end when Alexander approached Taxila, the principal
centers of Indian religious thought, whose ruler, called Taxiles. Taxiles affirmed
their support to Macedonian army on assurances of aid against the ruler of
Kashmir, their eastern neighbors, Abisares, and King Porus, the ruler of Jhelum.
But Abisares offered his submission so early. In Taxila ascetic Indian holy
men, a group of “naked philosophers” met Alexander and one of them, named Calanus,
joined his expedition.
The Battle of the Hydaspes Modern Jhelum
In early 326, Alexander started campaign
against Porus and both the armies met at the Hydaspes River, the modern Jhelum.
Porus had strong defense which included his infantry and his two hundred
elephants that made a living wall against Macedonian army along the east bank
of the river. But the fate of the field was not different from his earlier
battles, Alexander secretly crossed the flooded river using his tactical and
daring skills. Porus King asked Alexander to be treated “like a king,” which
impressed him as much that he not only restored his kingdom to Porus but even
added new territories to it.
When Alexander reached the river Hyphasis,
the modern Beas, mutiny raised in Macedonian Army. Soldiers denied to go on due
to continuous fighting stresses, terrified rumors that river Hyphasis valley
was occupied by great kingdoms possessing thousands of war elephants, and doubt
that they would ever return home. This steadily dropped the morale of troops,
in the end, the great king, defeated by his own army, and ordered the
construction of a great fleet for returned.
The End of the Campaign and Journey to Home
Historians have no definitive answer that
either Alexander have a master plan for world conquest when he left Macedonia
or his ambitions grow with each new success because he kept his plans to
himself. Between early winter 326 to midsummer 325, Alexander moved southward
and in July 325, he reached the mouth of the Indus where he sacrificed to gods
following the instructions of his father Ammon. Then Alexander sailed out onto
the Indian Ocean to pray to Poseidon for a safe voyage to Babylonia and
announced preparations for the journey to home.
Outcomes of the Indian Campaign
Since the reign of Darius I, Alexander’s
campaign was the first major invasion into India from the west which produced a
flood of new information for the west especially, Greeks about India and its
peoples. Although a decade or more after the death of Alexander the Macedonian
presence had disappeared from the Indian landscape and from the consciousness
of people of India. But Indian and Greek artistic traditions mixed to produce
Gandara art and to begin a stylistic terminology for expressing Buddhist
traditions in the form of human. Alexander had planned carefully to maintain
Macedonian rule over Indian domain, but the failed due to inadequate available
resources for far away part of the empire.
JOURNEY TO THE WEST
In late August 325, Alexander left India
for Persia, through Gedrosia, an arid region in southwestern Pakistan. In
December 325 BC, Alexander land on the Persian Gulf after an adventure-filled
voyage that lessened his sense of having barely escaped total disaster.
Turmoil Throughout The Empire
Alexander’s Army return from India
sparked turmoil throughout the empire. The earliest writers claimed that the
turmoil was caused by the decline of Alexander’s character. Modern historians
quote his barbarity at the reports of corruption and oppression by his
officials.
Uniting Macedonian and Barbarian
The dismay of his veteran Macedonian
troops leaded a serious threat to Alexander. In spring of 324 Alexander
celebrated the conquest of India in grand style and distributed decorations to
officers of the army and fleet. During grand celebration, following the
precedent set by his father Philip II, who had married at least seven women
from territories he had conquered, Alexander married to daughters of Artaxerxes
III and Darius III. Following the King, ninety of high ranked officers and ten
thousand of his soldiers married Persian and Asian women, and the king paid
their debts.
Successors – Introduction Iranian Troops into
the Army
Alexander introduced thirty thousand
young Iranian troops into the army who were trained to fight in Macedonian
style and referred them as his “Successors.” He discharged the veterans who
were too old or too ill to fight and sent them back to Macedon. He retained
only the children of those Macedonian veterans who married to Asian women, as
the nucleus of a new generation of soldiers loyal only to himself.
Death of The Great King: Alexander
The last year of Alexander’s reign was
full of commitments and unfulfilled plans. In November 324, Hephaestion, his
most intimate friend, drank himself to death. He ordered to build monument of
Hephaestion at Babylon and some writers claimed that he ordered the Greek
cities to worship him as a god.
In the spring of 323, a delegations meet
Alexander, bearing congratulations and petitions from the Greeks and other
peoples of the Mediterranean. Alexander also began to formulate plans for the
conquest of the Arabians as his next major project. However, on the other hand
omens of his impending death were already being bruited about. Even priests of
the Babylon revived the ancient substitute-king ritual: in which a criminal was
seated on the throne of king dressed in the royal regalia, then executed him in
the hope of averting the doom threatening the king.
But all efforts in wain, on May 29,
Alexander fell ill during a party presented by one of his officers. After
suffering from fever and delirium for almost two weeks, the great King
Alexander just at the age of thirty died on June 10, 323 BC. Later legends
claimed that he was the victim of a plot concocted by Aristotle and Antipater,
whom he had decided to replace as his substitute in Europe. While others
believed that, Alexander’s body was exhausted by the strain of constant
campaigning and numerous wounds, was unable to fight off a disease, possibly
malaria.
ACHIEVEMENTS OF THE GREAT CONQUEROR: ALEXANDER
THE GREAT
Alexander the Great changed the world the
Greeks knew forever, hero or villain, the world was not the same after he had
passed through it and the effects of his conquests resonate to this day. From
the Mediterranean to India, Eurasia are places he passed through, destroyed,
built, and changed.
Alexander’s plans for his empire remains
a myth, because Alexander did not expect to die. The Roman emperor Augustus was
told that at the time of the death of Alexander, he was perplexed about what he
should do next. Augustus expressed his surprise that Alexander did not consider
governing his empire a greater challenge than conquering it. Alexander’s papers
contained only schemes for grandiose monuments and future campaigns, instead of
plans for the governance of his empire.
THE END...