ALEXANDER THE GREAT

ALEXANDER THE GREAT (356–323 b.c.), king of Macedon, conqueror of vast empire that included Greece, Persia, Egypt, and (briefly) parts of India Alexander the Great, son of King Philip II of Macedon and a student of Aristotle, was the ancient world's greatest general. In the spring of 326 b.c. he led his Macedonian army across the Indus at Attock, conquering Punjab with only 30,000 foot soldiers and cavalry. Alexander's ambition was to conquer all of India, but he was blocked by his own soldiers, who refused to advance beyond the Beas River. Alexander's brief interlude in India proved a potent catalyst for change, probably inspiring the founder of India's first imperial dynasty, Chandragupta Maurya, and opening trade and cultural highways of intercourse between Hellenistic and Indic civilizations.

Raja Ambhi of Taxila, the first Indian prince to confront Alexander, wisely opened the gates of his capital to Alexander's army. Hellenistic coins and fragments of Gandharan art and a small Greek temple, visually reflecting the impact of Alexander's invasion, are preserved in modern Pakistan's Taxila Museum. We know from Strabo's account (XV,C.715) that just outside the gates of Taxila, Onesicritus, one of Alexander's officers, found fifteen Hindu yogis sitting stark naked on blazing rocks in the sun. He tried, through three interpreters, to learn the "secret" of their endurance, but failed. The one yogi whom Alexander took away with him died of food poisoning, as would Alexander himself, before returning home.

The most important impact of Alexander's brief conquest of Punjab, however, appears to have been the inspiration it provided to Chandragupta Maurya, a "young stripling" Alexander met after he had conquered the Punjabi kingdoms of Porus (Puru) and his neighbors. Chandragupta returned to his Eastern Gangetic Kingdom, Magadha, soon after meeting with Alexander, inspired by Alexander's dream of universal conquest, to overthrow its raja; less than two years later Chandragupta established North India's first great empire, which lasted 140 years, as long as the British Raj would.

In addition to his martial prowess and bold vision of global conquest, Alexander was a builder of cities and bridges, his engineering corps arming him with the capability of crossing the mighty Indus. His brilliant Greek scientists brought a number of Western ideas, in medicine as well as philosophy and astronomy, to North India, some of which were adopted by precocious Indian scientists, whose own unique discoveries in those fields antedated most of those known to the Greeks. Multicultural interaction between the Hellenistic West and India would remain an important legacy of Alexander, who was so impressed by Raja Puru's elephant corps that he brought several of those earliest "tanks" back with his own army.

Stanley Wolpert

See alsoGuptan Empire ; Punjab

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Fildes, Alan, and Joann Fletcher. Alexander the Great: Son of the Gods. London: Duncan Baird, 2001.

Hammond, N. G. L. Alexander the Great. 3rd ed. London: Bristol Classical Library, 1980.