CHAPTER VI: THE GREEKS IN INDIA, 327 TO 161 B.C.
External Sources of the History of India
The external history of India commences with the Greek invasion in 327 B.C. Some indirect trade between India and the Mediterranean seems to have existed from very ancient times. Homer was acquainted with tin, and other articles of Indian merchandise, by their Sanskrit names; and a long list has been made of Indian products mentioned in the Hebrew Bible. The first Greek historian who speaks clearly of India is Hekataios of Miletos (549-486 B.C.); the knowledge of Herodotos (450 B.C.) ended at the Indus; and Ktesias the physician (401 B.C.), brought back from his residence in Persia only a few facts about the products of India, its dyes and fabrics, monks and parrots. India to the east of the Indus was first made known to Europe by the historians and men of science who accompanied Alexander the Great, King of Macedon, in 327 B.C.
Alexander’s Expedition
Alexander the Great entered India early in 327 B.C.; crossed the Indus above Attock, and advanced, without a struggle, over the intervening territory of the Taxiles to the Jehlam (Hydaspes). He found the Punjab divided into petty kingdoms jealous of each other, and many of them inclined to join an invader rather than to oppose him. One of these local monarchs, Porus, disputed the passage of the Jehlam with a force which, substituting chariots for guns, about equalled the army of Ranjit Singh, the ruler of the Punjab in the present century. Plutarch gives a vivid description of the battle from Alexander’s own letters. Having drawn up his troops at a bend of the Jehlam, about 14 miles west of the modern field of Chilianwála, the Greek king crossed under shelter of a tempestuous night. The chariots hurried out by Porus stuck in the muddy bank of the river. In the engagement which followed, the elephants of the Indian prince refused to face the Greeks, and, wheeling round, trampled Porus’ own army under foot. His son fell early in the onset; Porus himself fled wounded; but, on tendering his submission, he was confirmed in his kingdom, and became Alexander’s trusted friend. Alexander built two memorial cities on the site of his victory—Bucephala, on the west bank of the Jehlam (near the modern Jalalpur), named after his beloved charger slain in the battle; and Nikaia, the present Mong, on the east side of the river.
Alexander in the Punjab
Alexander advanced southeast through the kingdom of the younger Porus to Amritsar, and, after a sharp bend backward to the west to fight the Kathaei at Sangala, he reached the Beas (Hyphasis). Here, at a spot not far from the modern battle-field of Sobraon, he halted his victorious standards. He had resolved to march to the Ganges; but his troops were worn out by the heats of the Punjab summer, and broken in spirit by the hurricanes of the south-west monsoon. The native tribes had already risen in his rear; and the Conqueror of the World was forced to turn back before he had crossed even the frontier Province of India. The Sutlej, the eastern Districts of the Punjab, and the mighty Jumna still lay between him and the Ganges. A single defeat might have been fatal to his army; if the battle on the Jehlam had gone against him, not a Greek would probably have reached the Afghan side of the passes. Yielding at length to the clamour of his men, he led them back to the Jehlam. He there embarked 8000 of his troops in boats, and floated them down the river through the Southern Punjab to Sind; the remainder of his army marched in two divisions along the banks.
Alexander in Sind
The country was hostile, and the Greeks held only the land on which they encamped. At Múltan, then as now the capital of the Southern Punjab, Alexander had to fight a pitched battle with the Malli, and was severely wounded in taking the city. His enraged troops put every soul within it to the sword. Farther down, near the confluence of the Five Rivers of the Punjab, he made a long halt, built a town, Alexandria,—the modern Uchh,—and received the submission of the neighbouring states. A Greek garrison and satrap, whom he here left behind, laid the foundation of a lasting Greek influence. Having constructed a new fleet, suitable for the greater rivers on which he was now to embark, Alexander proceeded southwards through Sind, and followed the course of the Indus until he reached the ocean. In the apex of the delta, he founded or refounded a city—Patala—which survives to this day as Hydarabad, the native capital of Sind. At the mouth of the Indus, Alexander beheld for the first time the majestic phenomenon of the tides. One part of his army he shipped off under the command of Nearchus to coast along the Persian Gulf; the remainder he himself led through Southern Baluchistan and Persia to Susa, where, after terrible losses from want of water and famine on the march, he arrived in 325 B.C.
Results of Alexander the Great’s Expedition
During his two years’ campaign in the Punjab and Sind, Alexander subjugated no Province; but he made alliances, founded cities, and planted Greek garrisons. He had given much territory to Indian chiefs devoted to his cause; every petty Indian court had its Greek faction; and the troops which he left behind at many points, from the Afghan frontier on the west to the Beas river on the east, and as far south as the Sind delta, seemed visible pledges of his return. A large part of his army remained in Bactria; and in the partition of the empire after Alexander’s death in 323 B.C., Bactria and India fell to Seleukos Nikator, the founder of the Syrian monarchy.
Chandra Gupta
Meanwhile a new power had arisen in India. Among the Indian adventurers who thronged Alexander’s camp in the Punjab, each with his plot for winning a kingdom or crushing a rival, Chandra Gupta, an exile from the Gangetic valley, seems to have played a somewhat ignominious part. He tried to tempt the wearied Greeks on the banks of the Beas with schemes of conquest in the rich Provinces of Hindustan to the south-east; but, having personally offended Alexander, he had to fly the camp (326 B.C.). In the confused years which followed, he managed, with the aid of plundering hordes, to found a kingdom on the ruins of the Nanda dynasty in Magadha, or Behar (316 B.C.). He seized their capital, Pataliputra, the modern Patná; established himself firmly in the Gangetic valley, and compelled the north-western principalities, Greek garrisons and Indian princes alike, to acknowledge his suzerainty. While the Greek general Seleukos was winning his way to the Syrian monarchy during the eleven years which followed Alexander’s death, Chandra Gupta was building up an empire in Northern India. Seleukos reigned in Syria from 312 to 280 B.C.; Chandra Gupta in the Gangetic valley from 316 to 292 B.C. In 312 B.C. these two monarchs advanced their kingdoms to each other’s frontier; they had to decide whether they were to live in peace or at war. Seleukos in the end sold the Greek conquests in the Kabul valley and the Punjab to Chandra Gupta, and gave his daughter in marriage to the Indian king. He also stationed a Greek ambassador at Chandra Gupta’s court, from 306 to 298 B.C.
Megasthenes’ Account of India
This ambassador was the famous Megasthenes. His description of India is perhaps the best that reached Europe during two thousand years, from 300 B.C. to 1700 A.D. He says that the people were divided into seven castes instead of four—namely, philosophers, husbandmen, shepherds, artisans, soldiers, inspectors, and the counsellors of the king. The philosophers were the Brahmans, and the prescribed stages of their religious life are indicated. Megasthenes draws a distinction between the Brahmans (Brachmanes) and the Sramans (Sarmanai), from which some scholars infer that the Buddhist Sramanas or monks were a recognized order fifty years before the Council of Asoka. But the Sarmanai of Megasthenes probably also include Brahmans in the first and third stages of their life, as students and forest recluses. The inspectors, or sixth class of Megasthenes, have been identified with the Buddhist supervisors of morals. Arrian’s name for them, episkopoi, is the Greek word which has become our modern Bishop or overseer of souls.
Indian Society, 300 B.C.
The Greek ambassador observed with admiration the absence of slavery in India, the chastity of the women, and the courage of the men. In valour, he says, they excelled all other Asiatics; they required no locks to their doors; above all, no Indian was ever known to tell a lie. Sober and industrious, good farmers, and skilful artisans, they scarcely ever had recourse to a lawsuit, and lived peaceably under their native chiefs. The kingly government is portrayed almost as described in the Code of Manu. Megasthenes mentions that India was divided into 118 kingdoms; some of which, as the Prasii under Chandra Gupta, exercised suzerain powers over other kings or dependent princes. The Indian village system is well described, each of the village communities seeming to the Greek an independent republic. Megasthenes remarked the exemption of the husbandmen (Vaisyas) from war and public services; and enumerates the dyes, fibres, fabrics, and products (animal, vegetable, and mineral) of India. Husbandry then as now depended on the periodical rains; and forecasts of the weather, with a view to ‘make adequate provision against a coming deficiency,’ formed a special duty of the Brahmans. ‘The philosopher,’ he says, ‘who errs in his predictions observes silence for the rest of his life.’
Later Greek Invasions
After the time of Alexander the Great the Greeks made no important conquests in India. Antiochos, the grandson of Seleukos, entered into a treaty with the famous Buddhist king, Asoka, the grandson of Chandra Gupta, in 256 B.C. The Greeks had founded a powerful kingdom in Bactria, to the north-west of the Himalayas. During the hundred years after the Indo-Greek treaty of 256 B.C. the Greco-Bactrian kings sent invading hosts into the Punjab; some of whom reached eastwards as far as Muttra, or even Oudh, and southwards to Sind and Cutch, between 181 and 161 B.C. But they founded no kingdoms; and the only traces which the Greeks left in India were their science of astronomy, their beautiful sculptures, and their coins. Some of the early Buddhist statues, after 250 B.C., have exquisite Greek faces; and the same type is preserved in the most ancient carvings on the Hindu temples. By degrees even this trace of Greek influence faded away; but specimens of Indo-Greek sculptures may still be found in the museums of India.
Materials for Reference
The works most easily available to the English reader are Mr. McCrindle’s admirable series of translations of the Greek writers, and fragments dealing with India, especially his Commerce and Navigation of the Erythraan Sea; General Cunningham’s Ancient Geography of India; Weber’s History of Indian Literature; the Reports of the Archaeological Survey of India, especially of Western India. Mr. McCrindle’s translations are about to be republished by Mr. Constable under the title of The Invasion of India by Alexander the Great as described by Arrian, Quintus Curtius, Diodoros, Plutarch, and Justin (1892).