The invasion of India by Alexander while not directly connected with Indology, is indeed a very curious episode in Indic History which has a bearing on the chronology of India. First and foremost , there is clearly no record of his invasion in any accounts of Indian history. He appears to have fought a minor Baron or regional Governor or Satrap of the Chakravarti by the name of Puru(porus - to paraphrase Rex harrison why cant the Greeks and other Europeans learn to pronounce foreign names)), who administered a region near present day Takshashila, if we are to believe the accounts of the Greeks. Now who were these Greek historians who reported on the victory of Alexander. The recounting is done by Strabo and Arrian (Arrian was a proconsul in the employ of the Roman empire and lived 400 years after the advent of Alexander’s expedition) as well as Pliny and Plutarch. They were certainly not present at the time of the battle, but relied on the descriptions given by Alexander’s companions, Onesecritus, Aristibulus and his admiral Nearchus .In what follows we give the gist of the Western acccount of the event. It is incredible that very few western authors have bothered to check the account of the Greek invasion in the Indian historical record and if they did they rarely report that they found little or nothing. This is especially curious because the English historians based their entire chronology on the date of Alexander’s battles and on the second hand description of Megasthenes, the Seleucid Greek ambassador who came to the court of Chandragupta, shortly after Alexander died and Seleucus Nicator took over the Eastern part of Alexander’s empire
>From Wiki After the death of Spitamenes and his marriage to Roxana (Roshanak in Bactrian) to cement his relations with his new Central Asian satrapies, in 326 BC Alexander was finally free to turn his attention to the Indian subcontinent. Alexander invited all the chieftains of the former satrapy of Gandhara, in the north of what is now Pakistan, to come to him and submit to his authority. Ambhi (Greek: Omphis), ruler of Taxila, whose kingdom extended from the Indus to the Jhelum (Greek:Hydaspes), complied. But the chieftains of some hilly clans including the, Aspasios and Assakenois sections of the Kambojas (classical names), known in Indian texts as Ashvayanas and Ashvakayanas (names referring to the equestrian nature of their society from the Sanskrit root work Ashva meaning horse), refused to submit. Alexander personally took command of the shield-bearing guards, foot- companions, archers, Agrianians and horse-javelin-men and led them against the Kamboja clans—the Aspasios of Kunar/Alishang valleys, the Guraeans of the Guraeus (Panjkora) valley, and the Assakenois of the Swat and Buner valleys. Writes one modern historian: "They were brave people and it was hard work for Alexander to take their strongholds, of which Massaga and Aornus need special mention."[6] A fierce contest ensued with the Aspasios in which Alexander himself was wounded in the shoulder by a dart but eventually the Aspasios lost the fight; 40,000 of them were enslaved. The Assakenois faced Alexander with an army of 30,000 cavalry, 38,000 infantry and 30 elephants.[7] They had fought bravely and offered stubborn resistance to the invader in many of their strongholds like cities of Ora, Bazira and Massaga. The fort of Massaga could only be reduced after several days of bloody fighting in which Alexander himself was wounded seriously in the ankle. When the Chieftain of Massaga fell in the battle, the supreme command of the army went to his old mother Cleophis (q.v.) who also stood determined to defend her motherland to the last extremity. The example of Cleophis assuming the supreme command of the military also brought the entire women of the locality into the fighting.[8] Alexander could only reduce Massaga by resorting to political strategem and actions of betrayal. According to Curtius: "Not only did Alexander slaughter the entire population of Massaga, but also did he reduce its buildings to rubbles." A similar manslaughter then followed at Ora, another stronghold of the Assakenois. In the aftermath of general slaughter and arson committed by Alexander at Massaga and Ora, numerous Assakenian people fled to a high fortress called Aornos. Alexander followed them close behind their heels and captured the strategic hill-fort but only after the fourth day of a bloody fight. The story of Massaga was repeated at Aornos and a similar carnage on the tribal-people followed here too. Writing on Alexander's campaign against the Assakenois, Victor Hanson comments: "After promising the surrounded Assacenis their lives upon capitulation, he executed all their soldiers who had surrendered. Their strongholds at Ora and Aornus were also similarly stormed. Garrisons were probably all slaughtered.”[9] Sisikottos, who had helped Alexander in this campaign, was made the governor of Aornos. After reducing Aornos, Alexander crossed the Indus and fought and is believed to have won an epic battle against a local ruler Porus, who ruled a region in the Punjab, in the Battle of Hydaspes in 326 BC. After the battle, Alexander was greatly ‘impressed’ by Porus for his bravery in battle, and therefore made an alliance with him and appointed him as satrap of his own kingdom, even adding some land he did not own before. Alexander then named one of the two new cities that he founded, Bucephala, in honor of the horse who had brought him to India, who had died during the Battle of Hydaspes. Alexander continued on to conquer all the headwaters of the Indus River. East of Porus' kingdom, near the Ganges River, was the powerful empire of Magadha ruled by the Nanda dynasty. Fearing the prospects of facing another powerful Indian army and exhausted by years of campaigning, his army mutinied at the Hyphasis River (the modern Beas River) refusing to march further east. This river thus marks the easternmost extent of Alexander's conquests: As for the Macedonians, however, their struggle with Porus blunted their courage and stayed their further advance into India. For having had all they could do to repulse an enemy who mustered only twenty thousand infantry and two thousand horse, they violently opposed Alexander when he insisted on crossing the river Ganges also, the width of which, as they learned, was thirty-two furlongs, its depth a hundred fathoms, while its banks on the further side were covered with multitudes of men-at-arms and horsemen and elephants. For they were told that the kings of the Ganderites and Praesii were awaiting them with eighty thousand horsemen, two hundred thousand footmen, eight thousand chariots, and six thousand fighting elephants. —Plutarch , Vita Alexandri, 62 [10]
According to Henry Rooke, the translator of Arrians History of Alexanders expedition into English, as expressed in the preface of the book “Alexander’s invasion was checked even in Kaffirstan (present day Afghanistan) by Samudragupta. The famous World conqueror was obliged to flee with the remnant s of his army. Alexander never crossed the Indus to the east. The crossing of the Indus, the defeat of Porus, and the establishment of the Greek kingdom in the Punjab was all pure concoction by the Greek writers, who followed Alexander as part of his retinue and who were bent upon pleasing him by agreeable flattery. Or they may have been satirical compositions by those same writers. It is worth noting that the campaign of Alexander made no impression culturally or politically on India, nor were they any references to it in Indian sources. The most significant outcome of his campaign was that some of his Greek companions, such as Onesecritus, Aristobulus, and his admiral Nearchus, recorded their impressions of India . Strabo and Arrian, as well as Pliny and Pkutarch, incorporated much of their material into their writings. But some of these impressions are fanciful and make for better fiction than history.” So much for Alexander and his mythical invasion into the Punjab and his even more emythical victory over Porus, but what of the young man who warned Alexander of a vast army waiting for him if and when he should decide to cross the Indus. It is the contentionof English historians that this was Chandragupta Maurya trhe founder of the Maurya empire . This was the sheet anchor upon which they based the entire chronology of Ancient India. Every other date was worked backward relative ot his date. So what if Alexander never won the battle, this event should be a legitimate reference point. In order to analyze this we have to do some research into Megasthenes, the Seleucid Greek ambassador to the court of Chandragupta. Source :Arrian’s History of Alexanders expedition translated by Henry Rooke, first published 1729
Partly adapted from Antiquity and Continuity of Indian History by Prasad Gokhale (excerpt)
Megasthenes wrote extensively on India during his travels to the Indian subcontinent. .Unfortunately none of his original manuscripts survive today. Megasthenes book titled Indica is lost and nobody in the modern world has been able to retrieve the book or its contents. So all we have is the account of Arrian and Strabo who claim to quote him. Megasthenes purportedly lived at the court of King Sandrocottus, for some years after 302 BCE (approximately 20 years after the much ballyhooed invasion of Alexander) as the ambassador of Seleucus Nicator who proclaimed himself the emperor of the eastern dominions of Alexander after his death. But we forget that there was more than one Chandragupta in Indian History. There is also the first of the Imperial Gupta dynasty Chandragupta I. Modern historians place him 600 years after Sandrocottus (of the Mauryas). Note this is only a relative dating and not an absolute one. The reason they gave was that this would place Asoka Vardhana (Chandragupta’s grandson) around the middle of the third century. Of course this does not explain why it is so sacrosanct to place Asoka in the middle of the third century BCE. But assuming the answer and then adopting it as an assumption was probably equally in vogue then, long before we had coined the phrase ‘circular argument’. Other scholars such as M Troyer, Kuppiah, Narayana Sastry objected to this identification with Chandragupta Maurya and they pointed out that Chandragupta of the Gupta empire should be identified with Sandrocottus. Troyer communicated this view to Max Mueller but M Mueller did not even bother to reply.
However, the Greek chronicles are strangely silent on the names of Chanakya (Chandragupta's Guru) who managed to install the Maurya on the Magadha throne, Bindusar (his son) and even Ashoka (his grandson) whose empire extended far wider than that of Chandragupta. The empire of Chandragupta, also known as the Magadha empire, was very powerful and had a long history but is nowhere mentioned by the Greeks. Even Buddha bhikkus and the flourishing religion of the Buddha are not mentioned in their literature. This imbroglio has been challenged by various scholars and is precisely summarized by K. Rajaram (in "A Peep into the Past History, Seminar Papers", Madras, 1982), "There are difficulties in calculating the date of the coronation of Asoka .. In the first instance, the very identification of Sandrokotus with Chandragupta Maurya is questioned. In the second one, the date of the death of the Buddha has not been fixed accurately and therefore, the date of Asoka based on it cannot be accurate." Indeed, the Sandrocottus of the Greeks was not a Maurya. The Greek records mention Xandramas and Sandrocyptus as the kings immediately before and after Sandrocottus. These names in any way are not phonetically similar to Mahapadma Nanda and Bindusar, who were the predecessor and successor of Chandragupta Maurya, respectively. However, if Sandrocottus refers to Chandragupta "Gupta", the Xandramas reckons to be his predecessor Chandrashree alias Chandramas and Sandrocyptus to be Samudragupta. The phonetic similarity becomes quite apparent and also, with the assistance of other evidence, confirms the identity of Sandrocottus to Chandragupta Gupta. In the Puranic and other literature, there is no allusion anywhere to an invasion or inroad into India by foreign peoples upto the time of Andhra kings; and the only person who bore the name similar to Sandrocottus of the Greeks, and who flourished at the time of Alexander, was Chandragupta of the Gupta dynasty, who established a mighty empire on the ruins of the already decayed Andhra dynasty and existing 2811 years after the Mahabharata War, i.e., corresponding to 328 B.C. His date is currently placed in the fourth century A.D., which obviously does not stand. It is also interesting to note that the accounts in the life of Sandrokotus of the Greeks, and the political and social conditions in India at that time, match to those of in the era Chandragupta Gupta. With this observation, it is therefore that the Greek and Puranic accounts unanimously agree on the issue of the identity Chandragupta Gupta and Sandrocotus. The ten kings of Shishunaga dynasty ruled for 360 years, beginning from 1994 B.C. and ending with 1634 B.C. At this time, an illegitimate son, Mahapadma-Nanda, of the last Shishunaga emperor, Mahanandi, came to the throne of Magadha. The total regal period of this Nanda dynasty was 100 years. After this, with the assistance of Arya Chaanakya( alias Vishnu Gupta), Chandragupta Maurya ascended the throne of Magadha, and that is in year 1534 B.C. This date can be arrived and confirmed using many independent accounts.
Pargiter also uses this false methodology of first fixing the date of Chandragupta Maurya at 325 BCE and then working backward to the Mahabharata War, instead f doing the converse
Pargiter 1.Dynasties of the kali Age
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