It was another amazing piece of info Aunty!!! Loved reading about it!
From your post it's quite clear that Puru also became a puppet in the hands of Alexander after the battle of Hydaspes. So we can't actually give credits of the vision of Akhand Bharat, like Sony's Porus is giving him.
Dear Lucky Snow,
It is no secret that Chandragupta, and the ragtag army Chanakya was able to cobble together, were defeated "handsomely" by Dhananand twice. There was nothing surprising about it given the strength of Dhananand's armed forces, about which Porus earlier briefed Alexander in full, and which surely affected Alexander's calculations despite his burning desire to push on into further into India..
Exactly their dream and ambition didn't blow out after facing one or two failures, they persevered and persevered until and unless they finally found success!!! That's why their dreams were not a mere dream but a vision for which they worked hard, which noone at that era could properly think about even.
What was admirable was that Chandragupta and Chanakya rallied again and again, for they had faith in their cause, and at last were able to put together a winning coalition that forced Dhananand to flee into exile. It was like the Scottish king Robert Bruce, who won against the English only on his fourteenth attempt, though C&C did not have to try so many times! Such ironclad self-belief and commitment to a cause is admirable, not something to be derided.
+101
CCC&C did not win because the Magadha population rebelled effectively against Dhananand. If that was so they would have done it long ago, for Dhananand was a tyrant and his reign crushed the populace. It was more because Chanakya had bribed and won over Dhananand's commander in chief, Bhadrasaal, and thus weakened the resolve and unity of Dhananand's army considerably. In such situations, it is almost always the army that decides the outcome.
You know what I feel Aunty, Chanakya can never be categorized in black & white region. He was a devil Still he was an angel!! He was a devil for each and every hindrance and casualties coming in to the path of Akhand Bharat, but still he was an angel for the cause of Akhand Bharat.
As for the death of Porus, he was assassinated by Eudemus, one the Macedonian generals who fought in the Diadochi wars for getting as large a slice as possible of Alexander's conquests in India. He was not, as someone might misunderstand from your post, one of Porus' Macedonian generals.
In 326 BC, Eudemus was appointed by Alexander the Great to the command of the Macedonian troops left in India. This was after the murder of the earlier Alexander-appointed satrap Philip by his own mercenary Indian troops that year
Alexander dispatched letters to India to Eudemus and also to Ambhi telling them to take charge of the district formerly under Philip, until Alexander could send a satrap to govern the district. This was what was done. Porus ruled the territories given to him by Alexander plus his own kingdom.
Alexander died in 323 BC, Once this happened, Eudemus got a free hand. He had Porus assassinated so as to seize his territories, and his elephants, which he wanted to use for his struggle against the other Diadochi generals, especially Antigones. However, he was murdered by Antigones. So the assassination of Porus was a product of the internecine fighting among the Macedonian generals, nothing else. It had nothing to do with Chanakya.
Again, Laghu Paurava ( laghu meaning 'small') was the illegitimate brother of Porus. He rebelled against Porus and later fled to Magadha. He was part of the C&C coalition against Dhananand, but he wanted half of the Magadha empire and an even larger part of the treasury. So he incited the other coalition partners to demand a partition of Magadha and its riches immediately. To do this would have fragmented Magadha, reduced the campaign against Dhananand to a looting exercise, and destroyed any chances of forming an Akhanda Bharat. So Chanakya, who was never squeamish about such things. had Laghu Paurava killed, and matters settled down.
The upshot of all this was that the Mauryan empire eventually united almost the whole of the subcontinent and a large part of modern Afghanistan, and it was well ruled, for the great benefit of its citizens, till it collapsed 47 years after the death of Ashoka.
Shyamala Cowsik
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