But the deed which, of all others, Arrian extols as the most noble deed ever performed by Alexander, took place in this wise in the desert. His army, parched with thirst, were stumbling on blindly, led, as usual in times of distress, by Alexander on foot.
To him, weary and exhausted, returned scouts, bearing with them water collected in a helmet with great difficulty from some cleft in a distant rock.
He took it, thanking the bearers, but immediately poured it upon the ground in sight of all. "As a result of this," Arrian writes, "the entire army was reinvigorated to so great a degree that any one would have imagined that the water so lavished had furnished draught for every man."
Truly, though he left little of sovereignty behind him, Alexander left enough pictures imprinted on the soil of Hindustan to furnish forth many a gallery.
[THE GREAT MAURYAS]
B.C. 321 TO B.C. 184
We come here to one of the landmarks of Indian History. There were seven kings of the Maurya dynasty; of these, two gained for themselves an abiding place in the category of Great World Rulers. Their names are Chandra-gûpta and Asôka. Grandfather and grandson, they made their mark in such curiously divergent ways that they stand to this day as examples of War and Peace.
Concerning Chandra-gûpta's usurpation of the throne of the Nine Nandas, something has already been said. It has also been mentioned that while still almost a lad, he met with Alexander during the latter's brief summer among the Punjâb Doâbs or Two-waters, so called because they are the fertile plains which lie between the rivers.
The identification, indeed, of the Sandracottus mentioned by Greek writers with Chandra-gûpta has been of incalculable value in enabling historians to fix other dates. It has been, as it were, a secure foundation for a superstructure which has grown, and still grows, year by year, and in which every new stone discovered is found to fit accurately in its place.
At the time of this meeting, Chandra-gûpta was a nameless adventurer, a political exile from Magadha. Who he really was seems doubtful. The illegitimate son, it is said, of one of the Nine Nandas by a beautiful low-caste woman (from whose name, Mura, the titular designation of the dynasty Maurya is taken), it is hard to see whence came the young man's undoubted claim to be of the Shesh-nâg, or Serpent race; for the Nandas were as undoubtedly of low-caste origin themselves. It is possible, therefore, that some further history of wrong may have existed to make Chandra-gûpta claim kinship with the Serpent-Kings whom the Nandas had ousted, and hold himself, like any young pretender, a rightful heir.