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Alexander and India

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

Extract

No army leader has become more famous in history than Alexander. He has been praised and admired as well as blamed and cursed. But even if blemishes can be found in his career and character, no one can deny his ‘daemonic’ strength of will and leadership, which alone are sufficient to mark him out as one of the greatest generals history has seen. Opinions may, however, differ as to whether he was more than that.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1965

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References

page 155 note 1 A. vii. i. 4 (Loeb translation).

page 156 note 1 Strabo, , xv. i. 10 (Loeb translation).Google Scholar

page 157 note 1 Sastri, K. A. Nilakanta, The Age of the Nandas and Mauryas (Banaras, 1952), 50.Google Scholar

page 157 note 2 D. xvii. 84; see Majumdar, R. C., The Classical Accounts of India, 163Google Scholar. Majumdar has reproduced the extract from McGrindle, , The Invasion of India by Alexander the Great as described by Arrian, Quintus Curtius, Diodorus, Plutarch and Justin (London, 1896).Google Scholar

page 157 note 3 A. v. 3. 5; D. xvii. 86. 3; C. viii. II. 4 ff.

page 157 note 4 A. v. 3. 5; 8. 2 ff.; D. 86. 4 ff. (‘Mophis’); all the Diodorus references are to Book xvii unless otherwise stated; C. loc. cit. (‘Omphis’).

page 158 note 1 A. v. 8. 4; D. 87; C. viii. 12.

page 158 note 2 C. loc. cit.

page 158 note 3 See pp. 151–4.

page 158 note 4 A. v. 18. fin.–19, init. (Loeb translation); cf. C. viii. 14; P. 60.

page 158 note 5 Dharmavijayi means ‘conqueror through righteousness’.

page 159 note 1 Samadragupta was the fourth king of the Gupta dynasty. He was a great conqueror and Smith thought of him as the Indian Napoleon. An account of the campaigns of the king is inscribed on an Asokan pillar found at Allahabad. It refers to the defeat of several kings of South India whose names are given and it says that the king reinstated all those kings after their defeat, having obtained only their allegiance. He did not annex their territories.

page 159 note 2 Arrian (v. 21. 2 ff.) refers to him as ‘Porus, the bad one’, because he was reported to have left his own province and fled. Some sources believe that this Porus was a cousin of the great Porus; cf. D. 91. I.

page 159 note 3 A. v. 20. 5; C. ix. I. 7 ff.; cf. D. 90. 4.

page 159 note 4 A. v. 22. I; D. 91. 2 ff.

page 159 note 5 A. v. 20. 5–6; 24. 2; D. 91. 4. Cathaeans had a non-monarchical form of government and they were the ‘republics’ of ancient India, like the Malloi (Malavas), Oxydracae (Kshudraka), and others.

page 159 note 6 C. ix. i. 36 ff.; D. 93. I.

page 159 note 7 A. v. 25 ff.; C. ix. 2–3; cf. D. 94, fin.; P. 62.

page 160 note 1 Ibid.

page 160 note 2 A. vi. 3–11; D. 97 ff.; C. ix. 4. 15 ff.; P. 63.

page 160 note 3 A. vi. ii. 3 (Loeb translation):‘… they (the Mallians) had determined to join the Oxydracae and to fight together, but Alexander reached them too quickly …’. A different account in D. 98; confused in C.

page 160 note 4 A. vi. 16; D. 102–3; C. ix. 8. 8 ff. (‘the Musicani’).

page 161 note 1 P. 69; see Majumdar, R. C., op. cit. 200.Google Scholar

page 161 note 2 Ibid. 65; Majumdar, op. cit. 201–2.Google Scholar

page 161 note 3 Ibid. 64; Majumdar, op. cit. 200–1.Google Scholar

page 161 note 4 Ibid.

page 161 note 5 Chanakya was a Brahman scholar of Taxila (?), who was offended by the Nanda king. He later became the Chief Minister of Chandragupta after having helped him to overthrow the Nandas. He wrote the famous treatise on Polity known as Kautalya, 's Arthasastra.Google Scholar

page 162 note 1 According to the Buddhist sources, Chandragupta was born in a self-governing Kshatriya tribe known as the Moriyas in the Nepalese Terai.

page 162 note 2 Philippus: A. vi. 27. 2; C. x. I. 20.

page 162 note 3 According to Indian literary sources, Chandragupta and Chanakya were helped in their bid to overthrow the Nanda power by a certain Indian king named Parvartaka who ruled in the Punjab and who may be identified with Porus.

page 162 note 4 Mukherjee, Radha Kumud, The Age of Imperial Unity (Bombay, 1951).Google Scholar

page 162 note 5 Ibid.

page 162 note 6 Tarn, i. 147cf.Google Scholar ii, Appendix 25. Against this, however, Badian, E., Historia vii (1958), 425 ff.Google Scholar

page 163 note 1 Sastri, K. A. Nilakanta, op. cit. (p. 157, n. 1), 79.Google Scholar

page 163 note 2 His empire is definitely known to have included an area from Aria to Bengal and from Kashmir to Mysore. This empire over which the Mauryas ruled up to the time of Asoka was never ruled again by any single king or power in Indian history.

page 163 note 3 The discovery of an Asokan inscription in Greek characters in Kandahar should dispel whatever lurking doubts some scholars might have had in this regard.

page 163 note 4 Strabo, , ii. i. 9, 70cGoogle Scholar; xv. I. 36, 702 c; A. v. 6. 2; Pliny, , NH vi 58Google Scholar; Clem. Alex. Strom, i. 72. 5.Google Scholar

page 163 note 5 Schlumberger, D., Robert, L., etc., Une bilingue gréco-araméetnne d'Asoka (Paris, 1958).Google Scholar

page 164 note 1 See the text of Rock Edict XIII; Hultzsch, , Inscriptions of Asoka in Arch. Sur. Ind. (Calcutta and Oxford, 1925).Google Scholar

page 164 note 2 Sastri, K. A. Nilakanta, op. cit. 354.Google Scholar

page 164 note 3 Ibid.

page 164 note 4 Ibid. 358.

page 164 note 5 Ibid.; see Kautilya, 's ArthasastraGoogle Scholar, ed. and trans, by Shama Sastri.

page 164 note 6 Marshall, , Taxila (Cambridge, 1951), ii. 433Google Scholar, iii. Pl. 130.

page 164 note 7 Bachhofer, L., Early Indian Sculpture (Paris, 1929), i. Pl. 13.Google Scholar

page 164 note 8 See Narain, A. K., The Indo-Greeks (Oxford, 1957).Google Scholar

page 164 note 9 Ibid. 181.

page 165 note 1 Narain, , op. cit. 97.Google Scholar

page 165 note 2 Bulletin de l'École française d'Extrême-Orient, xxv (1925), 112Google Scholar; xxxi (1931), 448.

page 165 note 3 Marshall, , Taxila, i. 3334.Google Scholar

page 165 note 4 Narain, , op. cit. 118.Google Scholar