Battle of the Hydaspes

[Hypaspist]

Ok, so I watched a few Alexander documentaries on youtube, but my mood quickly soured upon viewing the other videos made by conspiracy theorists people living in India. These people will not let up! They fervently propose that not only did Alexander lose against Porus, but Porus also never existed!! They constantly harp on that there is not a simple mention of the battle in Indian sources/history books. Some people even claim there is no proof of his campaign into India. Could someone help dispell these delusional conspiracy theories?

[Alexias]

Hi. I don't know why some Indians (even academics) seem to have such an issue with Alexander being in India. Maybe they are trying to rewrite their ancient history to exclude any European influence. Yet western India was part of the Persian Empire, so do they deny the Persians too?

True, Alexander was only in what is now modern India for 2-3 years and his presence perhaps didn't have any significant or lasting impact in the area. Ultimately India defeated him, so what is the issue with admitting his presence in India? It was nearly two and a half millennia ago, so it is hardly likely that any written evidence of such a brief period would survive. After all, the principal Indian source (according to Wikipedia) for Chandragupta who created his Indian Empire at the same time as the wars of the Successors were occupying attention further west, is a 12th century text.

Or is the issue about Indian pride, denying western conquerors had any effect while home-grown conquerors were building their own empires? Other than that, I have no answers to how you can combat such prejudice and blindness.

[Hypaspist]

Thanks for your answer! I just find it strange that they seem obsessed with denying Alexander’s victory or even Porus’s existence!! They always dwell on the absence of any mention of the battle in indian sources. That seems to be their triumphant card, well at least in their own view.

Again, they say that the greeks invented this whole Hydaspes charade. Were the greek historians averse to Alexander, or would they be glad to chronicle any defeat of Alexander’s had there been one?

[Alexias]

Again, I think this is a matter of pride. If Porus didn't exist then he didn't have an army to get beaten. Reading Kathleen Toohey's paper on the Battle of the Hydaspes, it seems that the Indian armies simply hadn't seen anything like as efficient and well-disciplined a killing machine as Alexander's army, and really, were out-classed.

[chris_taylor]

"No mention in Indian sources" - beware of anyone using woolly concepts. What is India??

An academic who actually read all sources left by the peoples who inhabited the Indian subcontinent would never dream of saying that. He be specific. He's say there are no mentions of Alexander in writings left behind by Persian, Mughal, Dravistan, Buddhist, Maurya, Vijayanagara ... for the rest of the list he'd quote, look at the wikipedia page for India.

However, I do think that Alexander never reached the territory of modern day India, ie the political state that came into being in 1947.

Alexander Cunningham in his "Ancient Geography of India" puts the place of the Hyphasis Mutiny around 40 miles downstream from the current confluence of Hyphasis (modern Beas) and Sutlej rivers. That puts it just north of modern Kasur, Pakistan.

HTH

[system1988]

A little info here ...the Pakistani ambassador here in Athens always complains ( gently smiling) that Alexander never arrived in India ,but in today' s Pakistan.

[Alexias]

This isn't just about differences in interpretation of what constitutes India. There seems to be a different methodology in interpreting ancient texts in India with no clear attempt to differentiate between myth and history. For example, this gentleman is associated with a New Delhi university https://jnu.academia.edu/KashinathMishra and has posted several papers on Alexander. This is an extract from his paper on Porus:

As I have described at many places that it was the nascent period of Sanskrit and Greek languages, many words were created to describe the activities and fate of the Greek man, who had begun his march from Greece with the mission of world conquest. Words like Heracles, Dionysus, Bacchus and Sandrocottos are only the events in the life of that man, who mainly survives as Alexander the Great today. Treating these names as separate individuals will be a molestation of history.

Here I would like to recapitulate some of the facts which I have repeatedly mentioned in my articles. The first and most important one is the use of many names both in Sanskrit and Greek for the invader, which is confused for many invasions of India. At several places I have identified Alexander of Greek descriptions with Indra of Rigveda because both had come to India along with Greeks, Iraneans, Dahae, Porus and others. let me make it clear that these are described as the sons of Yayati, who in his turn is also called Indra. Here I think it proper to explain the fact that early writers present victory as male sex and defeat as female sex. Birth of five sons to Yayati and one daughter to Heracles, are classic examples. One name of Indra is also Arjuna , who has the pivotal role in the Mahabharat war.

How to recognize Porus in the Mahabharat ? When we have recognized Arjuna as Alexander the Great, then it is not difficult to identify his archenemy Porus. Puru was the son (victory ) of Yayati or Indra. Geeta gives many synonyms of Krishna or Indra ; one of them is the sun. Karna was the son (victory) of the sun. Thus we can safely conclude that Karna the formidable enemy of Alexander the Great is none other than Porus. Again, Karna was not a king when he countered Arjuna but he was raised to the rank of a king by Duryodhana or the bad fighter. Porus was also raised to the rank of a king by Alexander.

I do not know how representative this is of history teaching in India, but elsewhere he appears to believe that Alexander did not die in Babylon but returned to India to live on for another 50 years. Then there is this conspiracy theory https://pothos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=6905 which appears to suggest that Calanus was behind a conspiracy theory to poison Alexander. All this seems to point to a desire to either inflate India''s importance in Alexander's career or, failing that, to deny it even happened.