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Perspective
The Spinning of a Legend
Alexander the Great, or the Merely Mediocre
by
Kamesh Aiyer
 Many years
ago I came across a comment in a Usenet posting (to those who don’t
remember Usenet, it was the blog of the pre-web world), that said that
there was no proof that Alexander won any victories in India and that it
might be more appropriate to call him “Alexander the Merely Mediocre”.
The comment amused and intrigued me and much later I had an opportunity
to read Alexander’s biography by Plutarch. I was surprised to find out
that Plutarch wrote his biography over two hundred years after
Alexander’s death using oral legends as his source. It is possible that
he may also have had access to a personal diary kept by Alexander’s
physician, but that is about it. Plutarch wrote the biography of
Alexander as part of a series of biographies that contrasted the
different styles of great Greek leaders, and in his view, Alexander was
possibly the greatest of the greats, flawed only by youthful
indiscretions. But otherwise, the tale came from legends spread by
Alexander’s friends after he came back from India and died.
So the story of how Alexander met and defeated the Puru king (“Porus” to
the Greeks) and released him because Puru asked to be “treated like a
king” in defeat did not come from any documented source. It was a
legend.
The story, then, of Alexander’s triumphant march into India, finally
only giving up at the urging of his soldiers who were tired after years
of fighting and who wanted to return to their loved ones (in Persia?);
the odyssey down the Indus, defeating various kingdoms but sustaining a
deadly wound; and, finally splitting his army in two so that they would
have a better chance of returning with the news in case of further
conflicts; returning with a fraction of his army to the seat of his
empire in Persepolis and his death from his wounds; all based on legend.
No documents, no sources, just myth.
So did Alexander really venture successfully into India and turn back at
the urging of his men? Or was it all spin?
I’ve searched what I can access of Usenet now and looked elsewhere for
any follow-up to the original comment. I did not find any, so I thought
I should follow up, if only with a comment on Boloji!
Alexander’s defeat of the Persian empire and his victory over Egypt are
well documented by non-Greek sources. So, I am not saying anything about
these. After Alexander’s death the empire was divided into three,
corresponding roughly to Greater Greece, Egypt, and Greater Persia, with
tributaries to the east commanded by generals, such as Seleucus. No
lands east of the Indus were part of this division; and subsequently,
under the Mauryas, an Indian empire extended all the way into modern
Afghanistan (ancient Gandhara) and modern Baluchistan (ancient Gedrosia).
So Alexander did not even leave behind successors who would acknowledge
his rule.
So what exactly happened to Alexander in India?
Supposedly, Alexander first met some resistance from minor kingdoms in
the Northwest, possibly from around Swat. He defeated these rulers. Then
he met Ambi of Taxila who welcomed him as a fellow ruler, agreed to be
his vassal, and offered him safe transit to the east. Then Alexander
laid siege to a city and commited a crime against Athena by promising a
safe conduct to mercenaries defending the city and massacring them after
they left the city – Plutarch believes that the withdrawal of Athena’s
blessing was the reason why he could not complete his victories in
India.
Then Alexander crosses the Indus into the Punjab and somewhere near
modern-day Delhi, perhaps even in the historic battlefields of Panipat
or Kurukshetra, he fought Porus and Porus lost. There is a story about
how the Indian elephant brigade was winning the day when by cleverly
attacking Porus’ elephant, the Greeks managed to un-elephant Porus, and
the elephants in disarry retreated rough-shod over their own troops.
Porus is captured and brought to Alexander in chains. Alexander looks at
the tall (supposedly 6 cubits) Porus and asks him how he wanted to be
treated. Porus replied, “Like a king” – his arrogance and pride aroused
Alexander’s admiration.
Promptly, Alexander released Porus, agreed to be his friend, restored
his lost kingdom to him, and added to it lands that were part of Ambi’s
Taxila.
Huh? Let’s have that again.
Ambi, who fought on Alexander’s side, lost lands to Porus as a result of
Porus’s defeat. Some defeat.
Then, having established himself as a magnanimous victor, Alexander
asked Porus what it would take to win the rest of India. He made the
mistake, I guess, of asking this in public with all his generals
listening in, and Porus described the entire rest of the Gangetic valley
with its multiple kingdoms, and the Magadhan empire downstream. Porus
described these in terms of how much bigger they were than his own
little kingdom.
As a result, there was no more stomach among Alexander’s generals for
continuing. They had almost lost to Porus. How could they successfully
confront even larger forces?
And so Plutarch’s story goes that the army revolted against continuing.
And Alexander decides to retreat, but he asks Porus what the best way to
return would be. He is told that he should go down the Indus in boats
and then go along the Makran coast in boats and ships to Arabia and
thence to Persia. And Alexander does something like that – at the Indus
delta he splits his force into two and sends one by sea and the other by
land and they both return safely after three years.
But, uh-ho?
Why couldn’t he just retreat? He had just defeated Porus and obtained
his eternal friendship. He had defeated the kingdoms along the way and
set up his own warlords to rule them. Ambi was his friend (well, maybe).
He knew the way back.
There is a simpler explanation that does not require one to strain one’s
intelligence. Alexander lost to Puru. Puru imposed a separate peace on
Ambi that included the surrender of some Taxilan land to Puru and a
withdrawal of support for the Greeks. Alexander negotiated a
safe-conduct for his own troops, provided they went down the Indus, and
did not trouble Taxila or Puru again.
So there’s Alexander, having suffered his first major defeat, set adrift
down the Indus with a much reduced army. To get food and supplies, they
have to negotiate or fight with the cities they pass. They even pick up
some “philosophers” from a city populated and defended by
“philosophers”, i.e., Brahmins. Plutarch has some stories about these
Brahmins, some of which remind one of prescriptions in Kautilya’s
Arthashastra.
Along the way, Alexander suffers a wound to the side.
They reach the delta of the Indus and make a decision to split – I’d
like to imagine that the idea of splitting his force came from his
Indian philosopher friends. It was wise advice. Alexander’s most urgent
concern would have been for his family and his empire if any Persian
enemies or even some fair-weather friends received the news of his
defeat. The two halves of his army would be tied by bonds of friendship
(and hostages in all but name retained by Alexander in his force).
Whichever half returned first, it would serve to spread a different
story, a story of the victory and the magnanimity of Alexander the
Great.
What was left back in the Gangetic plain? Two “small” kingdoms, Taxila
and Puru, that were to be swallowed up by the expanding Magadhan empire.
Twenty years later, Chandragupta Maurya would take over the Magadhan
empire and the true details of the encounter between these Indian
kingdoms and Alexander would be lost to history for ever.
Instead, Alexander’s physician and friend who had taken care of him on
his deathbed had a journal to write. And his other friends had a story
to tell, that would ensure that the myth of Alexander Megalos
(the Great) would keep his enemies from attacking him as he lay dying.
Centuries later, Plutarch makes Alexander immortal.
Why do I call the legend of Alexander “spin”. Because that is what it
is. Alexander could not afford to look like a loser. His successors
could not afford to look like losers. Years later, Plutarch could not
afford to deflate the Alexandrian bubble.
If we took the inhabited portions of all of Alexander’s verified
conquests, and excluded the “Indian” provinces of Gandhara and Gedrosia,
the resulting empire, “Alexander’s empire”, would be a little bit
smaller than the inhabited portions of the Gangetic plain. Yes,
Alexander may have been a great warrior and he was surely a lucky one
when he defeated the weakened Persian empire, but it would be silly of
us to accept without question the thesis that Alexander was all set to
conquer the kingdoms of North India. But such is the influence of the
“West” on us Indians – and by the “West” I mean the Persians, the
Egyptians, the Greeks, the Arabs, the Europeans, the English, the
Americans, and so on, that we accept without question that some tin-pot
megalomaniac was about to do just that.
July 30, 2006
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Perspective
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The Spinning of a Legend: Alexander the Great
... by Kamesh Aiyer
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