Fig. 15.—Eukratides.
Note J.—Site of Alexander’s Camp on the Hydaspês
It is a point of great importance to determine where the camp was situated which Alexander formed on reaching the Hydaspês, and which he made his headquarters till he effected the passage of the river. Without knowing this it cannot with certainty be decided at what point he made the passage or where he defeated Pôros, or where he founded the two cities, Nikaia and Boukephala, which he built after his victory. Such high authorities as Sir A. Burnes, General Court, and General Abbott have placed the camp at Jhîlam, but Lord Elphinstone and General Cunningham prefer Jalâlpûr, a place some thirty miles lower down the stream. These writers all drew their conclusions from personal knowledge of the localities concerned. Cunningham, who wrote later than the others, visited the Hydaspês in 1863, and in his Geography of Ancient India (pp. 157-179) gives an account of the scope and results of his investigations. He points out that Alexander in advancing from Taxila to the Hydaspês had two roads—one called the upper, which proceeded through a rich and fertile country, past Rawal Pindi, Manikyâla, and Rohtâs to Jhîlam, and another called the lower, which proceeded, with an inclination to southward, to Dudhiâl, and thence by Asanot and Vang to Jalâlpûr. He then shows from Strabo and Pliny that Alexander must have advanced by the lower road. According to Strabo (XV. i. 32), “the direction of Alexander’s march, as far as the Hydaspês, was, for the most part, towards the south; after that, to the Hypanis, it was more towards the east.” Now, if Alexander had taken the route by Jhîlam he would have advanced in one continuous straight line, which is in direct opposition to the explicit statement of Strabo, which makes him deviate towards the south. Pliny again (vi. 21), quoting from Diognêtos and Baitôn, the mensores of Alexander, gives the distance from Taxila to the Hydaspês as 120 (Roman) miles. In comparing this distance with that from Shah-Dheri to Jhîlam and Jalâlpûr respectively, we must reject Jhîlam, which is no less than sixteen miles short of the recorded distance, while Jalâlpûr differs from it by less than two miles. The same author thinks that the camp probably extended for about six miles along the bank of the river from Shah Kabir, two miles to the north-east of Jalâlpûr, down to Syadpûr, four miles to the west-south-west. In this position the left flank of the camp would have been only six miles from the wooded promontory of Kotera, where he intended to steal his passage across the river. The breadth of the Hydaspês at Jalâlpûr is about a mile and a quarter.
Note K.—Battle with Pôros
To the accounts of this memorable battle given by Arrian and the four other writers translated in this volume, I here add the account of it given by Polyainos in his work On the Stratagems of War (II. ix. 22):
“Alexander, in his Indian expedition, advanced to the Hydaspês with intention to cross it, when Porus appeared with his army on the other side determined to dispute his passage. Alexander then marched towards the head of the river, and attempted to cross it there. Thither also Porus marched, and drew up his army on the opposite side. He then made the same effort lower down; there, too, Porus opposed him. Those frequent appearances of intention to cross it, without ever making one real attempt to effect it, the Indians ridiculed, and, concluding that he had no real design to pass the river, they became more negligent in attending his motions, when Alexander, by a rapid march gaining the banks, effected his purpose on barges, boats, and hides stuffed with straw, before the enemy had time to come up with him, who, deceived by so many feint attempts, yielded him at last an uninterrupted passage. In the battle against Porus, Alexander posted part of his cavalry in the right wing, and part he left as a body of reserve at a small distance on the plain. His left wing consisted of the phalanx and his elephants. Porus ordered his elephants to be formed against him, himself taking his station on an elephant at the head of his left wing. The elephants were drawn up within fifty yards of each other, and in those interstices was posted his infantry, so that his front exhibited the appearance of a great wall; the elephants looked like so many towers, and the infantry like the parapet between them. Alexander directed his infantry to attack the enemy in front, while himself at the head of the horse advanced against the cavalry. Against those movements Porus ably guarded. But the beasts could not be kept in their ranks, and, wherever they deserted them, the Macedonians in a compact body pouring in closed with the enemy, and attacked them both in front and flank. The body of reserve, in the meantime wheeling round and attacking their rear, completed the defeat” (Shepherd’s Translation).
Grote, referring to this battle, remarks that “the day on which it was fought was the greatest day of Alexander’s life, if we take together the splendour and difficulty of the military achievement and the generous treatment of his conquered opponent.” Military critics cannot point to a single strategical error in the whole series of operations conducted by Alexander himself, or his generals acting under his orders, from the time he encamped on the bank of the Hydaspês till the overthrow and surrender of Pôros. At the same time the courage and skill with which the Indian king contended against the greatest soldier of antiquity, if not of all time, are worthy of the highest admiration, and present a striking contrast to the incompetent generalship and pusillanimity of Darius. “The Greeks,” says General Chesney, “were loud in praises of the Indians; never in all their eight years of constant warfare had they met with such skilled and gallant soldiers, who, moreover, surpassed in stature and bearing all the other races of Asia.... The Indian village community flourished even at that distant period, and in the brave and manly race which fought so stoutly under Porus twenty-two centuries ago we may recognise all the fine qualities of the Punjabi agrarian people of the present day, the gallant men who fought us in our turn so stubbornly, now the most valuable component of the Indian empire, and the best soldiers of its Queen-Empress.”