By Anoop Bose, Advocate, Supreme Court of India
The legendary Macedonian King Alexander III famously known as Alexander the Great (who was educated by the titanic Greek philosopher and scientist Aristotle and slept with the venerable Greek poet Homer’s monumental epic under his pillow), who brought to its knees formidable Persian empire and was universally regarded as one of the greatest military geniuses in human history, is a household name in India.
After the death of Spitamenes (the courtier turned rebel Zoroastrian warlord from Sogdiana who was the last belligerent Persian leader to challenge the ascending might of Alexander in battle) and his marriage to the ravishingly beautiful sixteen years old Roxana (meaning ‘little star’), the daughter of the powerful Bactrian chief Oxyartes, to cement relations with his new satrapies, Alexander turned his avaricious attention to India, the wondrous, fabled land of gold and spice.
He summoned the chieftains of the former satrapy of Gandhara, in the north of what is now Pakistan, to come to him and unconditionally accept his hegemony. Ambhi, the ruler of Taxila, whose kingdom extended from the Indus to the Hydaspes (Jhelum), conceded, but the chieftains of some hill clans refused to submit to Alexander’s overtures.
Ambhi pampered Alexander with lavish presents and placed himself and his forces at his disposal. Alexander not only returned Ambhi his title and the presents but in turn presented him with a treasure trove of Persian robes, gold and silver ornaments, 30 horses and 1000 talents in gold.
In 326 BC, Alexander personally spearheaded a campaign against the recalcitrant clans and scored a decisive victory against them.
In 326 BC, Alexander crossed the Indus and faced Porus (Purushottam), the prodigious Indian king of the Hindu Paurava kingdom, which was located between the Jhelum and Chenab rivers in what is now the Punjab province of Pakistan, in the epic Battle of the Hydaspes.
Porus was stupendous both as a man and as a king. He stood a majestic seven feet tall and was daunting as a ruler and warrior. He fielded an army that was not only a match for the Greeks but had an additional edge over the Greeks – war elephants!
The battle marked the first historical encounter with elephants in battle whose mammoth size and eerie trumpeting terrified the Greeks and their horses beyond imagination.
The Greek phalanx in lock shield formation advanced slowly but menacingly in a solid wall of pikes incessantly firing lethally piercing lead-weighted darts that caused the elephants to run amok and stampede the Indian troops, trampling many of them to death under their gigantic feet.
This is graphically depicted in the famous painting by the celebrated French artist and engraver Jean Alexandre Michel André Castaigne entitled ‘The Phalanx attacking the Centre in the Battle of the Hydaspes’.
The Indians broke ranks and hastily took to their heels. Some 80 elephants were captured by Alexander and many Indians were killed in the pursuit. The battle raged for eight hours and the Greeks suffered enormous losses in men and material.
Alexander finally captured Porus, who had been wounded in battle. The extraordinary bravery, martial acumen and princely disposition of Porus greatly impressed Alexander.
Wounded in his shoulder, he was asked by Alexander how he wished to be treated. “Treat me, O Alexander, like a king” Porus responded.
Alexander was magnanimously chivalrous and treated Porus as one great king and warrior should treat another. He allowed Porus to rule Hydaspes in his name as his vassal. He even subdued an independent province and granted it to Porus as a reward.
Porus reciprocated by giving Alexander a few elephants, with instructions on how to use them in war, and a Tibetan Mastiff, the only dog in the world which had the capacity to endure pain.
He also gifted Alexander some brilliantly sparkling rare diamonds – India was the only source of diamonds in the world till the 19th century! Porus also gave Alexander a stock of ‘Kattarvazha’ (Aloe Vela), an Ayurvedic magic healing herb from Kerala to heal his wounds.
Significantly, in the Battle of the Hydaspes, Alexander’s massive Thessalian black stallion Bucephalus (meaning Ox Head), who bore a large white star on his brow, was severely wounded and eventually died.
Alexander was grief stricken and founded a city in India in his horse’s honour called Bucephalia, which is now located in Pakistan’s Mandi Bahauddin District and simply called Phalia. Bucephalus is buried in Jalalpur Sharif near Jhelum in Pakistan.
To the east of Porus’ kingdom, near the Ganges River, were the Nanda Empire of Magadha and the Gangaridai Empire (of the modern day Bengal region of the Indian sub-continent).
Fearing the ordeal of facing large armies and exhausted by years of campaigning under the burning sun and torrential rains of India, Alexander’s army mutinied at the Hyphasis river (Beas), refusing to march farther east.
This river thus marked the easternmost magnitude of Alexander’s campaigns. They also violently opposed Alexander when he insisted on crossing the Ganges, the width of which, as they learned to their consternation, was thirty-two furlongs, its depth a hundred fathoms, while its banks on the further side were arrayed with multitudes of troops, horsemen and elephants.
The kings of the Ganderites and Praesii were indeed lying in wait to meet them with eighty thousand horsemen, two hundred thousand footmen, eight thousand chariots and six thousand war elephants.
Alexander tried to persuade his soldiers to march farther, but his general Coenus pleaded with him to return as the men ‘longed to again see their parents, their wives and children, their homeland’.
Alexander eventually agreed and turned south, marching along the Indus. Along the way, Alexander conquered the Malhi and other Indian tribes and even sustained an injury during the conquest.
The Greeks did not return as they had come. They sailed down the rivers Jhelum and Indus. Totally ignorant of India’s geography, they first believed that they were afloat upon the Nile and that they would return home by way of Egypt.
But they soon realised their navigational error and after a long and arduous journey finally reached Macedonia. And that inevitably closed the glorious chapter of Alexander’s Indian campaigns.
On either 10th or 11th June 323 BC, Alexander lay dying in the palace of the Neo-Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar II in Babylon. He summoned his generals and told them his three ultimate wishes:
- The best physicians alone should carry his coffin;
- The gold, silver and precious stones which he had accumulated in his treasury should be scattered along the path to the cemetery; and
- His hands should be kept dangling outside the coffin for all to see.
One of his generals who was completely taken aback by these unusual requests asked Alexander to explain. Alexander replied:
- I want the best doctors to carry my coffin to demonstrate that even the best doctors in the world are powerless to save a person from the clutches of death. So let not people take life for granted.
- I want the road to be covered with my treasure so that everybody sees that material wealth acquired on earth stays on earth. Let people realize that it is a sheer waste of time to chase wealth.
- I want my hands to swing in the air, so that people understand that we come to this world empty handed and we leave this world empty handed after the most precious treasure is exhausted, and that is time.
Time is our most precious treasure. We can produce more wealth, but we can’t produce more time. When we give someone our time, we actually give a portion of our life that we will never take back. Our time is our life!
With these words, Alexander closed his eyes, breathed his last and took leave of this world at the tender age of 32.
His mortal remains were laid in a gold anthropoid sarcophagus that was filled with honey, which was in turn placed in a well-crafted gold casket.
According to Claudius Aelianus, the ‘honey tongued’ Roman author and teacher of rhetoric, Alexander’s favourite seer Aristander of Telmessos foretold that the land where Alexander would be laid to rest ‘would be happy and unvanquishable forever.’
Whilst Alexander’s funeral cortege was on its way to Macedonia, Ptolemy I Soter (one of Alexander’s generals who became the ruler of Egypt) seized the casket and took it temporarily to Memphis in ancient Egypt.
His successor Ptolemy II Philadelphus transferred it to Alexandria, where it remained until at least late Antiquity. Ptolemy IX Lathyros, one of Ptolemy’s final successors, replaced it with a glass one to convert the original gold to coinage.
The recent discovery of an enormous tomb in Amphipolis in northern Greece, dating from Alexander’s time has given rise to the speculation that it was meant to be the burial place of Alexander.
Around AD 200, the Roman Emperor Septimius Severus permanently closed Alexander’s tomb to the public.
The death of Alexander is shrouded in mystery. There are numerous versions of his death. According to the historian and biographer Plutarch, Alexander entertained Admiral Nearchus roughly 14 days before his death and spent the night and the next day drinking with Medius of Larissa.
He developed a fever, which worsened until he lost his voice. Another reputed historian Diodorus Siculus recounts that Alexander was struck with pain after downing a large bowl of unmixed wine in honour of the divine hero Heracles, followed by 11 days of weakness and died after some agony.
Given the susceptibility of the Macedonian aristocracy to assassination, foul play featured in multiple accounts of his death. Many historians believe that Alexander was poisoned or was the victim of a poisoning conspiracy.
In a 2003 BBC documentary entitled ‘Alexander the God King’ investigating the death of Alexander, Leo Schep from the New Zealand National Poisons Centre revealed that the plant white hellebore (Veratrum album) may have been employed to poison Alexander.
In a 2014 manuscript in the journal Clinical Toxicology, Schep suggested Alexander’s wine had been laced with Veratrum album.
Another explanation put forward in 2010 proposed that the circumstances of his death were congenial to poisoning by water of the river Styx (modern-day Mavroneri in Arcadia, Greece) that contained calicheamicin, a poisonous compound produced by bacteria.
Several natural causes have also been identified, including malaria and typhoid fever. A 1998 article in the New England Journal of Medicine attributed his death to typhoid fever complicated by bowel perforation and ascending paralysis.
Another recent analysis suggests pyogenic spondylitis (meningitis). Natural cause theories also tend to emphasise that Alexander’s health may have been in general decline after years of heavy drinking and severe wounds.
The anguish that Alexander felt after the death of Hephaestion, his dearest friend and a General in his army, may also have contributed to his failing health and ultimate death.
In the course of his Indian campaigns, Alexander and his troops witnessed many strange and astonishing sights. They passed through unending primeval forests of towering trees beneath whose branches roosted flocks of wild peacocks.
They beheld serpents, resplendent in golden scales, gliding stealthily through the underwood. They stared in wonderment at ferocious combats of beasts and were dumbstruck by dogs that were not scared to fight with lions and ants that dug for gold.
Such was the wonder that was India!
Today, virtually all traces of Alexander’s Indian campaigns have disappeared. His altars have vanished and the names of the cities which he founded have been obliterated.
But the heroic exploits of ‘Sikander’, the Indian continue to fire the imagination of Indians living across the length and breadth of this ancient land.