What essentially tended to make the attack of these enemies easier was the discord among the states and tribes of the land of the Indus. The mightiest kingdom on this side of the Indus was the kingdom of Cashmere, whose princes had extended their territory over the mountains in the south, and the land of Abhisara. They were in excellent relations with the princely race of the Pauravas, which reigned between the upper course of the Vitasta and the Asikni. In common both states had sought to subjugate the free nations between their territories and on the borders of the Pauravas. They marched out with a great army, but they were unable to accomplish anything.[527] In the land of the Panjab the Pauravas possessed the most important warlike power; a neighbouring family of the same name ruled between the upper Asikni and the Iravati. Such a power was dangerous to the kingdom of Takshaçila, which lay to the west between the upper Iravati and the Indus; the princes of this state had long been at enmity with their neighbours, the Pauravas. A similar feud on the lower Indus separated the princes of the Mushikas and those of the region of Sindimana, which lay opposite, on the right bank of the Indus. Of the free nations the Kshudrakas and Malavas could together put 100,000 warriors in the field, but they were in a state of feud and hostility.
Alexander assembled his army for the march against the Indians at Bactra, whither, according to the Epos of the Persians, Semiramis had once summoned her troops against the Indian king Stabrobates. In the spring of the year 327 B.C. he crossed the Hindu Kush with 120,000 foot soldiers and 15,000 horse,[528] and when he arrived at Cabul he began the reduction of the Aryas, who dwelt on the right bank of the Indus.[529] At the confluence of the Cabul and the Indus lay the city of Pushkala, of which the territory was called among the Greeks Penkelaotis (Pushkalavati), and the prince Astes.[530] This city could not be reduced without a siege of 30 days. To the north of the Cabul the Açvakas, to the south the Gandarians had to be overpowered. Of the war against the Gandarians we know very little; the Açvakas made such a stubborn resistance that they were not completely subjugated till the winter. The Greeks call the Açvakas Assacanes, Aspasians, and Hippasians. They were under a king, who resided in the city of Maçaka (Massaga) on the Maçakavati,[531] no doubt an affluent of the Suvastu; lived in fruitful valleys, and kept horses and numerous herds of cattle on the high mountain pastures.[532] Beside the metropolis there were other walled cities and rocky citadels in the land of the Açvakas. At the approach of Alexander they fled to the mountains and to their fortified cities. When the Macedonians had taken the outer walls of the first city which they attacked, and the assault on the second seemed likely to succeed, the besieged sallied forth from the gates, and the majority escaped to the nearest mountains. Retiring with his army to the mountains from the open field before the Macedonians, the king of the Açvakas (western writers call him like his people Assacanus) fell in single combat; his people made the most violent efforts to recover his corpse from the enemies, but in vain.[533] Then, by means of a surprise at night, Alexander succeeded after a severe battle in dispersing the army of the Açvakas; forty thousand Indians are said to have been made prisoners, and above 230,000 cattle were taken as booty.[534] Before Maçaka, where the mother of the fallen king (the Greeks call her Cleophis) had assumed the conduct of affairs,[535] Alexander found an army of 30,000 foot soldiers, 2000 horse, 30 elephants, and 7000 men raised in the further part of India. By pretending to retire Alexander induced the Açvakas to advance further from the walls of the city, but though he made the movement he had prepared with all speed, he did not succeed in slaying more then 200 men. The walls of the city, it is true, gave way before his battering-rams on the very first day, yet he could not take the place, though the assault was carried on with the utmost vigour for four successive days. Then a shot from an engine killed the commander of the besieged; and they began to negociate. Alexander merely required that the mercenaries from the interior of India should leave the city and take service with him. The condition was accepted; the mercenaries marched out of the city and encamped on a hill opposite the Macedonian camp. Then, according to the Greek account, they intended to return to their homes in the night, to avoid bearing arms against their own nation. This intention was made known to Alexander, who caused the hill to be surrounded by his whole army, cut down the Indians to the last man, and then took the city by storm; the mother and daughter of Assacanus were captured. Whatever may have been the case with the supposed intention of the Indian mercenaries, and the intelligence which Alexander is said to have received of this intention—the city had fulfilled the condition imposed upon it, and had given up the mercenaries, why then was it attacked in this unexpected and unmerited manner against the terms of the capitulation? Alexander hoped that the fall of the metropolis would terrify the remaining cities into submission. But Ora had in turn to be regularly invested, and when this had been done Alexander in person took the city by storm. Lines were constructed against Bazira during the siege of Ora in order to cut off the supplies of the inhabitants. But on receiving the intelligence that Ora had fallen the inhabitants of Bazira left their city, and with many of their people sought refuge in the citadel of Aornus (no doubt avarana, protection), which is said to have been situated close to the Indus not far from its confluence with the Cabul, on an isolated hill, above 5000 feet in height, and above twenty miles in circuit at the foot. What is meant is apparently the steep height on the Indus, on which the citadel of Ranigat now lies.[536] Though Indians were found to point out to the Macedonians a hidden path to the summit of the hill, and select Macedonian troops thus reached a rock opposite the citadel, concealed themselves there during the night by a barricade of trees, and occupied the defenders by their unexpected attack, Alexander on the other side of the mountain could not force his way up. When the Indians had driven him back, they attempted to overpower the troops on the rock. To save these, Alexander had to take the same path which they had taken; after a severe struggle, which lasted from early dawn to night, he succeeded in joining his troops on this side. Then he caused his army to labour incessantly for four days in constructing a dam of wood-work and stones across the gorge which separated the ridge of rock from the citadel. As the work rapidly extended to a second eminence, which the Macedonians could now occupy, close to the citadel, the Indians abandoned the latter. But even so the war against the Açvakas was not ended. The brother of the fallen king (Diodorus calls him Aphricus, and Curtius Eryx) had taken the government into his hands, and got together a new force of 20,000 men and 15 elephants in the north of the land. Alexander marched against it to Dyrta. He found the city abandoned; even the population of the surrounding country had fled. Prisoners declared that the king, and the whole nation with him, had sought refuge beyond the Indus with Abhisares, i. e. in the region of Cashmere.[537] Alexander was pursuing him, when the king's head and armour were brought in by some of his people. When a few of his elephants had been captured, Alexander returned in sixteen marches to Pushkala on the bank of the Indus, and his army wintered in the land of the Açvakas.[538]
Early in the year 326 B.C. Alexander prepared to cross the Indus in order finally to measure himself against the fellow-tribesmen of the nations who had so long detained his arms on the right bank of the river. Even when he was in Sogdiana, Mophis the son of the prince of the Indians, who ruled between the Indus and the Vitasta (the Greeks call his territory the kingdom of Taxiles after the metropolis Takshaçila), sent envoys requesting that he would take his part and receive him as a vassal.[539] Mophis was moved to this step by the ancient feud between the kingdom of Takshaçila and the greater empire of the Pauravas between the Vitasta and the Asikni (the Greeks call this the empire of Porus). In the meantime the father of Mophis had died, and Alexander now received as the sign of submission on the part of the new prince, 3000 bulls, 10,000 sheep, 25 elephants, and about 200 talents of silver. He directed his march against the city of Takshaçila which lay half way between the Indus and Vitasta.[540] Mophis came to meet him with his warriors and elephants, and led him into his metropolis.[541] This city, the Greeks tell us, was large (the largest between the Indus and the Vitasta) and flourishing, and its constitution well arranged. The land, which sank gradually to the plain, was cultivated and very fruitful.[542] The king of Cashmere had sent his brother to Takshaçila to announce his submission; some smaller princes, neighbours of the territory of Takshaçila, came in person to pay homage to Alexander.
At Takshaçila the Greeks found "wise men" of the Indians. Aristobulus tells that he had there seen two Brahmans, one older and shaven, the other younger and wearing his hair. Both had been accompanied by their pupils. In the market-place they could take what pleased them, so that they had abundant food of honey and sesame without any cost, and everyone whom they approached drenched them so plentifully with sesame oil that it ran down into their eyes. Not far from the city they had given an example of endurance; the older, lying on the earth, exposed himself to the heat of the sun and then to torrents of rain; the younger went even further, for he stood on one leg and with both hands supported a log of wood three cubits in length, and when one limb was tired, he stood on the other, and continued standing the whole day long. Alexander desired to have one of these sages, who were in the greatest repute there,[543] about him, that he might learn their doctrine.[544] The younger one accompanied him a short time, but soon returned to his home; the older one remained with Alexander, and changed his clothing and mode of life; to those who reproached him on this account he replied that the forty years for which he had vowed asceticism (p. 179) were past.[545] Onesicritus relates that he had found fifteen of these sages to the south of the city, each in a different position, one sitting, another standing, a third naked and lying immovable on the ground till evening. The severest trial was the endurance of the heat, which at midday was so great that no one else could touch the ground with the naked foot. Among these sages, lying on stones, was the Calanus who afterwards followed Alexander, and subsequently ended his life in Persia. But Mandanis,[546] who was the first among them in age and wisdom, had said: That doctrine was the best which removed pleasure and pain from the soul; pain and effort were different things; effort was the friend, pain the enemy of the soul; they exercised the body by toil and nakedness and scanty nourishment, in order to stablish the spirit, that so the division between them might be ended, and they might give the best counsel to everyone. That house was the best which required the least furniture.[547] Megasthenes assures us that the sages of the Indians reproached Calanus because he renounced the blessedness which he might have enjoyed among them, in order to serve another master than God.[548] These accounts of the Greeks fully confirm the statements of the Buddhists given above (p. 387), that the law and order of the Brahmans were current in Takshaçila.
Beyond the Vitasta (Hydaspes) was the kingdom of Porus, as the Greeks called the ruler of it. He derived his race, as Plutarch says, from Gegasius, by whom may be meant the Yayati of the Rigveda and the Mahabharata (p. 82). The name Porus has been taken by the Greeks from the dynasty; the Mahabharata speaks of a kingdom of the Pauravas or Pauras, in the neighbourhood of Cashmere.[549] The territory of Porus extended to the east as far as the Asikni. Spittakes the nephew of Porus ruled over a small region on the west bank of the Vitasta; his cousin reigned in the east between the Asikni and Iravati. In the north the territory of Porus was separated from that of the king of Cashmere by a few small tribes. According to the Greeks the kingdom of Porus was superior to that of Cashmere; three hundred cities are enumerated in it. Porus could bring into the field 200 elephants, 400 chariots of war, 4000 horse, and about 50,000 foot soldiers.
Alexander encamped opposite the army of Porus, who held the left bank of the Vitasta; though far superior in numbers—his army was twice as strong and had been yet further increased by 5000 Indians from Mophis and some smaller princes—Alexander for a long time hesitated to cross the river in the face of Porus. At last he was decided by the information that the king of Cashmere, notwithstanding his embassy, was marching to join Porus, with an army not much weaker than his own, and was only 50 miles distant. Alexander divided his troops, left half opposite the camp of Porus, and with the other half hastened to cross the river higher up in order to defeat Porus before the army of Cashmere arrived. The crossing was accomplished in the neighbourhood of the modern Jalam.[550] Porus also divided his army; with all his elephants, chariots, and cavalry, and the greater part of his infantry, he marched against Alexander. Two hundred elephants in a long row with intervals of a hundred feet, as Arrian states, formed his first rank; the infantry formed the second rank, the cavalry and chariots were on the wings. After a fluctuating and desperate conflict the Macedonians were victorious. Porus, wounded in the right shoulder, was among the last to retire on his elephant. When his old enemy the prince of Takshaçila called on him to desist from the battle,[551] he answered by raising his javelin. The other retired hastily on his horse. Requested a second time by an Indian, a friend of old days, and afterwards at the command of Alexander, to lay down his weapons, he checked his elephants, quenched his thirst, and then allowed himself to be brought before Alexander, from whom his indomitable bearing and lofty form won respect. To Alexander's question how he wished to be treated, he replied: Like a king. His two sons and his nephew Spittakes had fallen; of his army, according to the Greeks, 12,000 in some accounts and 20,000 in others were slain (end of April or beginning of May, 326 B.C.).[552]
The defeat of Porus terrified the king of Cashmere. He did not venture to oppose Alexander unaided; at any rate he sought to avert the threatening storm for the moment; he sent his brother with forty elephants and other presents to appease Alexander by these tokens of submission. Alexander required that he should pay homage in person; otherwise he would visit him in his own land. He kept his word. The cousin of Porus, whose territory lay between the upper course of the Asikni and the Iravati—he had rendered no assistance to his kinsman against Alexander—fled out of his land with a part of his army at Alexander's approach,[553] and the Glaukas (Glausai, Glaukanikai among the Greeks,) who inhabited thirty-seven considerable towns and many villages on the heights to the north of the kingdom of the conquered Porus, submitted. Beyond the Indus the Açvakas were again in open revolt, and after crossing the Asikni, marching through the land of the fugitive prince, and advancing beyond the Iravati, Alexander found the most stubborn resistance among the Khattias (the Kathaioi of the Greeks),[554] who dwelt to the south of the Kaikeyas between the Iravati and Vipaça, and like the Glaukas obeyed no king. The Kshudrakas and Malavas, dwelling in the lower land on the Asikni and the Çatadru, had sent assistance to them. Hence the Khattias awaited the attack of the foreigners at their chief city Çakala (Sangala), the modern Amritsir. Near this spacious city, which abutted on a lake and was surrounded by a wall of bricks, they were encamped on a gentle eminence behind a triple row of packed waggons. After a bloody battle they were driven into the city, and Alexander then began the regular investment of the city by throwing up a double trench round it so far as the lake did not prevent him. An attempt on the part of the besieged to break through, of which Alexander received timely information by deserters, was abandoned after a loss of 500 men. The engines were set up, the battering-rams and wooden towers were prepared, when breaches appeared in the wall, which had been already undermined. The army of Alexander made the assault, the ladders were placed, the city taken. At this capture 17,000 Indians are said to have been slain; the remainder of the army and the entire population of the city, amounting together to 70,000 men, were made prisoners. Among the captive soldiers were 500 horsemen; and 300 chariots were taken. The city was levelled to the ground. This siege is said to have cost the Macedonians 100 slain and 12,000 wounded.[555] As the fate of Çakala did not terrify the remaining cities of the Khattias into submission, Alexander caused the inhabitants of two other cities, who fled at his approach, to be vigorously pursued; some hundreds who failed to escape were overtaken and cut down. The remaining places then submitted without opposition.
Alexander had not merely restored Porus to his throne after the battle on the Vitasta, but had even increased his power; he assigned to him the territory of the Glaukas, and of his fugitive cousin, together with the recently-conquered land of the Khattias, so that Porus, according to the Greeks, now reigned over seven nations, and more than two thousand considerable towns beside many villages.[556] The northern neighbours of the Khattias were the Kaikeyas, whose prince—the Açvapati of the time (p. 387), but the Greeks call him Sopeithes—welcomed Alexander, and thus as well as by presents gave evidence of his submission. The Greeks extol the good laws of this nation, and their vigorous dogs, a cross breed between tigers and dogs, as some thought. The Ramayana mentions among the Kaikeyas, "the dogs bred in the palace, gifted with the strength of the tiger, and of huge body." Alexander received 150 of these animals as a present from Açvapati.[557]
From the land of the Kaikeyas the Macedonians reached the eastern stream of the Panjab, which the Greeks call Hyphasis (it is the Vipaça of the Indians), above the confluence with the Çatadru. When Alexander had received here a further embassy from the king of Cashmere, which was accompanied by a fresh present of 50 elephants, and the homage of the prince of Uraça, whose territory lay to the west of Cashmere on the Himalayas,[558] he returned in the autumn of the year 326 B.C. to the Vitasta (Hydaspes); from hence he descended, sending part of his army on board ship down the river, and taking the remainder along the banks, in order to come to and along the Asikni, and from this to the Indus. Before he reached the Asikni his army, on the right bank of the lower Vitasta, came upon the nation of the Çibis; east of these, on the confluence of the Vitasta and the Asikni, were the Kshudrakas (the Greeks call them Oxydrakes), and still further to the east between the Asikni and the Iravati the Agalassians, while beyond the Iravati as far as the Çatadru were the Malavas, who like the Kshudrakas had already sent help to the Khattias against Alexander. The Çibis, a pastoral people, who carried the skins of animals and used clubs as weapons, were overcome with little resistance, or submitted without a struggle.[559] the Agalassians, who had put in the field some thousands of infantry and 3000 horse, were severely defeated by Alexander, and their cities conquered. The Kshudrakas and Malavas forgetting their ancient hostility had now combined against the foe, and together could bring into the field 80,000 foot soldiers, 10,000 cavalry, and 7000 chariots of war.[560] But the leaders whom the Kshudrakas put at the head of their forces were not true to the Malavas; they retired into their cities. These, unexpectedly attacked by Alexander, were taken one after the other; one of them is mentioned expressly as a Brahman city.[561] The largest city was found to be deserted; but on the banks of the Iravati 50,000 Malavas, it is said, had collected. They were put to flight, and sought protection in a neighbouring fortified place on the western bank of the Iravati. Alexander followed them. The attack on the city began. The Indians retired into the citadel from the walls of the city; this also Alexander at once attacked, and with his own hands seized on a scaling-ladder and ascended; Peukestes the shield-bearer of the king, Abreas and Leonnatus follow him; he gains the parapet and stands on the gangway when the ladder breaks. As in that position he was too prominent a mark, owing to the splendour of his armour, for the shots of the Indians, especially from the two nearest towers, he leaps from the gangway down into the citadel. The Indians press upon him; he beats down some of the assailants. Peukestes, Abreas and Leonnatus follow his example, and fight at his side, when an arrow pierces Alexander's mail and penetrates his breast. The king falls; Abreas falls also, struck in the face. With extreme effort Peukestes covers Alexander with the shield of Athene of Ilium, Leonnatus assisting on the other side, till at length the Macedonians force their way in, and put to death every living creature in the citadel, men, women, and children.[562] Then envoys came from the Malavas and promised the submission of the whole people. They were followed by the overseers of the cities and cantons of the Kshudrakas, accompanied by 150 chiefs of note, who pledged absolute obedience. Alexander required 1000 nobles as hostages. They were sent with 500 yoked and manned chariots of war, which the Kshudrakas added. The chariots Alexander retained in his army, the hostages he sent back.
These contests against the free Indians had occupied the autumn and winter. Not till the second month in the year 325 B.C.[563] did Alexander set out from his camp at the mouth of the Iravati to the Asikni, and sail up the latter to the Indus. The tribes on the Panjab and the Indus, the Abastanes, the Vasatyas, who lived according to Brahmanic laws (the Greeks call them the Ossadians[564]), and the Kshatris were easily reduced or submitted without a struggle. Arrived in the valley of the lower Indus the Macedonians again came upon principalities. There the nearest inhabitants on both sides of the river were the Çudras, whom the Greeks call the Sodroi or Sogdoi, governed by a king; then on the western shore followed the kingdom of Sambus, who at first submitted, and then at the instigation of the Brahmans seized his weapons, but soon fled over the Indus with 30 elephants. His metropolis, Sindimana, opened its gates; the other cities had to be taken by storm. In one of these Brahmans were captured, and those of them who had advised the king to revolt were executed. The whole land was laid waste; above 80,000 men are said to have been slain, and the rest sold as slaves.[565] Opposite the principality of Sambus, on the eastern bank, dwelt the Mushikas, whose king the Greeks call Musikanos, after his people; he abandoned every thought of resistance, as the Macedonians appeared on his borders earlier than he expected. When he had submitted, he also, on the instigation of the Brahmans, attempted to liberate himself by arms. He was defeated and crucified along with his Brahmans. To the south of the Mushikas lay the Prasthas,[566] on the eastern bank. The city, into which the prince had retired, was taken on the third day; the walls of the citadel soon collapsed, the prince fell in battle, the city was sacked. At the point where the Indus divides into two great arms on its course towards the sea, lay the great city of Potala, i. e. ship-station, the Pattala of the Greeks.[567] At Alexander's approach the prince of this region fled, the city was abandoned by the inhabitants, the surrounding country by the husbandmen.