Posted:
Dear Ankita,
I was impressed by this almost scholarly thesis of yours. My felicitations. 👏
My comments are in blue, they have to be brief (by my standards!) as my rheumatic fingers can't do too much these days,
This said, no amount of arguing will change the popular perception in India, not to speak of Europe, that Alexander won the battle even if it was a near run thing, and then there was the famous question How would you wish to be treated?, and the even more famous answer, As one king treats another.
Plus, a lot of supporters of the Porus won thesis, like Field Marshal Zhukov, the victor of Stalingrad, are not historians, but simply cite sources that favour their thesis. To my mind, the jury is still out, and in any case I don't care. I am not one of the Mera Bharat Mahaan persons who delight in such arguments harping on our past glories, for I am convinced that the greatness of our country and our civilisation do not need such props like a victory 2300 years ago.
What matters to me is what we allowed to happen afterwards, right down to the British Raj, mostly thru our own folly. And it is because of our sense of shame and guilt about this last that tales of past past triumphs become so all important.
Finally, nothing in my comments takes away anything from the pleasure I had in going thru your very well written post. I am more than pleased that you are back with me again! That can be seen from the way in which I have worn out my stiff, painful fingers in typing out my response!
Shyamala Aunty
Originally posted by: BrienneOfTarth
I read through a very interesting discussion on this post about the debate on whether Porus or Alexander won the battle. Here are some facts I have read myself on the entire thing -
1) Alexander's exploits were mainly documented by Plutarch, Arrian and some others who were historians living at least 200 yrs after the death of Alexander. They collected stories by speaking to the generals related to Alexander's army and their descendants to write their account.That brings up a question about the accuracy and exaggeration/moderation of the exploits of Alexander - we cannot believe it cent percent as per text and must try to separate the logical from the exaggerated bits.This is true of all historical accounts, even those of well documented reigns like that of Akbar.Moreover, not all the accounts of Alexander's life and achievements are of 200 years after his death. And how do current historians work, anyway? Don't they dig around in ancient sources, often of dubious origin?For Arrian writes that we must think Alexander as a God. So there is a lot of Greek sentimentalism and devotion mixed in this account which makes it not completely dependable. In Iran and many places of modern persia, he is never called Alexander the great but Alexander of Macedonia. It is because Alexander is accused of having destroyed a lot of their old cultural places and texts etc in his conquests. But after a conquest, Alexander was clever enough to know that a stable empire needs to integrate - so he encouraged the mixing of the west and east via cultural exchange and marriage.This Greek sentimentalism argument is flawed. The Greeks hated the Macedonians, whom they considered barbarians, and vice versa. If you read Diodoros on Alexander, you will never again cite this argument! Plus, every historian has his biases, right down to modern times. There is no such thing as historical objectivity.That aside, Alexander was truly a genius of war for his times. His tactics are truly legendary.Hannibal of Carthage, asked whom he would rate as the greatest military commander of the ages, unhesitatingly said: Alexander. And he was no slouch in that department himself!And this is why I come to the next point.2) The idea that Alexander retreated from India because of the revolt of his homesick soldiers is still debatable - accounts tell us that Alexander was clever enough to not charge into every battle with the same soldiers. He had a clever rotational system in his army by which after every interval of some time, some groups of men were sent home with women and riches while fresh troops from Macedonia and other conquered places joined his army. Thus, there is no question of his army being homesick!Then how does a revolt occur, we might ask?By the time Alexander reached India, a large part of his army was not Macedonian at all, but composed of assorted recruits from the lands he had conquered, like the Scythians, the Bactrians and so on. The rotational system would not apply to them. The new recruits would not have had the same fanatical devotion to Alexander that the Macedonians had. Plus he pushed them very hard, almost beyond the limits of human tolerance, though of course he always led from the front and endured the same hardships as his troops.There was not, going by a number of Greek and Roman accounts, a revolt. There was a pathetic plea to him to take them back home. This, as also Alexander's desperate attempt to ginger them up to follow him across the Ganga, has been shown beautifully in the well researched 1990 Chanakya, of Chandraprakash Dwivedi.It has been said in this thread that a great general could not possibly have been unable to suppress such disaffections. This is simply not true. Your troops have to fight for you willingly, and if not, you will fail. Alexander faced such situations at other points of his odyssey, but then he won the troops over.This time, the bar was too high and he failed. It is said that he sulked in his tent for 3 days, like his hero Achilles during the Trojan war.Well, here is my conjecture. Chanakya was already using people to spread rumours in Alexander's army about the scary elephants and black magic practised by the mysterious Indians. To outsiders, our ascetics practising yoga by hanging from the trees or doing a yagna infront of a fire would seem like black magic indeed. And Macedonians were alarmed by black magic as goes history by their reaction to how Olympia worshipped her god.Now this is something that is very likely. If you watch the excellent, even if not as good as the 1990 Chanakya, 2012 Chandragupta Maurya, these are precisely the tactics Chanakya is shown using. These include introducing plague infected rats into the Macedonian camp!Moreover, after the battle (forget who wins or loses at the moment) the two kings met and Porus is said to have been asked about what lay further east. Porus told them about the huge army of Magadha with thousands of men and cavalry and elephants. If anything, the thousands of elephants bit is bound to have scared them as just 85 elephants of Porus caused great damage to their army. Question - Was it a strategy of Porus the intelligent statesman to make sure his words intimidated the enemy?This too is very plausible. The 1990 Chanakya shows this in detail.3) After the battle, we find Alexander returning Porus his kingdom and also giving him additional territories. This is something he never did for any other king as far as I know because Porus was not the only honourable king he defeated and then killed. By common sense, only a victor or someone with the upper hand walks away from a war with both his life and kingdom plus extra land to boot.The additional territory point is debatable. But Porus was almost surely an exception as far as Alexander was concerned. There are always individuals who impress you so remarkably that all your former behaviour patterns are set aside when you deal with them. Commonsense does not apply any longer in such cases.Then again, in a lighter vein, Alexander would have been about 5'6", whereas Porus was 7 feet tall! No wonder that Alexander, on Bucephalus, was so impressed after seeing the giant Porus on his elephant!😉Morever, Porus became an ally of Alexander's after the battle, and was trusted as a loyal supporter. So even if he did gain suzerainty over other small kingdoms, this could have been because he was more reliable than the original rulers as far as preserving Macedonian rule in the conquered territories was concerned.4) After the battle, the Macedonians travelled south along the river until they reached the coast and then turned west. Question is why would a conqueror who wanted to win the world, dreamt of winning India/Aryavrat of the time promptly turn away after that one fierce battle? Alexander was a great statesman and strict general to his soldiers - as we have disproved the homesickness theory, we have to ask could not Alexander control his men and order them to march ahead to secure his dream?Logic states that after the fierce battle where his army is accounted to have suffered heavy losses if Alexander won the battle, his men are either afraid of more losses OR if Alexander lost the battle or it was a stalemate, his men are afraid of losing what little life they have left.But if he won the battle, it should have motivated his army to move ahead. There is no greater motivator than a victory. But they do not move further east but go south instead towards gujarat coast.This is a weak argument, and it is negated by your own very plausible suppositions above about Chanakya's scare tactics. Alexander's army would have been frightened at the idea of what lay ahead even if they had won at Hydaspes.Question is why. My logic says that either the Macedonians lost or they arrived at a stalemate against Porus. A stalemate means that Porus's forces ensured that even if they did not win, they dealt so much damage that any victory won by Alexander would produce no positive rewards. In short, the battle probably stopped when both camps realized that neither party was walking away from the place alive and happy. Both sides must then have met and struck a truce. Alexander would not attack Porus, and would give him more land in exchange for his friendship/calling off the war. As by accounts, we know that the overture of peacetalks came from the Macedonian side, as porus was initially ready to fight and die and not sit to talk.The standard account is that Alexander did not want such a brave man to die. He would not have felt so for a Darius! This aside, the stalemate thesis is plausible, as is that of a Macedonian victory with heavy losses.Logic states that Greek historians would not be so praising of Porus' valour if he had not at some point become friendly with their people.He was very friendly with them till Chanakya won him over with promises of the emperorship of an Akhanda Bharat, promises Chanakya had of course no intention of keeping! The Macedonian kingdoms in Northwestern India outlasted Alexander, and it took Chandragupta, with all of Chanakya's wiles to back him, years to finally evict them, especially Seleucus.5) Interesting fact is why does Alexander not take the known route he took to come to india...but he takes a new and dangerous route rife with more enemies and battles - logic states that there must have been some obstacle to the army returning by the route they had come...I believe in the stalemate theory. A army cannot march thorugh a place if they have not conquered it. Something must have blocked their way back and forced them to journey southwards. The only army to do so logically becomes the Pauravas who by my logic had won those territories back from Alexander in the truce pact they agreed upon.If so, why would they attack the returning Macedonians? Surely a smooth retreat would have been provided for in the supposed truce pact? Was Porus such a deceitful man as to violate the terms of the agreement?These are my views on it. This is probably why even the American movie Alexander (unbiased by greek or indian perspective) did not show the result of that battle. Alexander is shown injured and carried away from the battle, sees the damage and then he gets up later and declares that they should go home now.Let us not even talk of Oliver Stone's Alexander, which is a disgrace to his former reputation as a director. And since when has Hollywood become an arbiter of ancient, or even modern history, meaning Pearl Harbour? Alexander was seriously injured at the siege of what is today Multan, not at the battle of the Hydaspes. Stone probably confused Alexander with Bucephalus!😉In my opinion, whatever be the outcome of that battle, Alexander was forced to abandon his dream halfway in either case.
His dream was not attainable in any case, and he seems to have had no idea of China, not to speak of Japan. What defeated him was his own army, alarmed by the immensity of India and the reports of the strength of Magadha.Nonetheless, he was and is a global superstar, unrivalled even after three millennia. And he has a very good reputation in India, which is odd!
Bade Achhe Lagte Hain
Anupamaa
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