Here they remained five
days to repair the ships, and then sailed on past the promontory of Malana
(modern Rās Malan) the limit of the Oritae and of India'.
days to repair the ships, and then sailed on past the promontory of Malana
(modern Rās Malan) the limit of the Oritae and of India'.
Cambridge History of India - v1
92, 93.
It would seem that so far geographical researches such as those of
Major G. H. Raverty (J. A. S. B. for 1892, pt. i) have a mainly negative value in showing
the rashness of the older identifications rather than a positive value in establishing new
ones. If either the statements in our texts had been loss vague or the river beds less
changeable the case would not have been so hopeless.
4 Being in the country of the Mālavas, north of the confluence of the Acesines
and Hydraūtes, the town cannot have been Multān, which lies south of the confluence.
## p. 336 (#373) ############################################
## p. 336 (#374) ############################################
ވެޙިހު
1
!
. .
:
iii);
## p. 337 (#375) ############################################
XV
SUBMISSION OF MĀLAVAS
337
)
citadel wall among the first, stood there for one moment in his shining
armour, a mark for the defenders' darts, and then leapt down almost alone
on the inner side. There he stood with his back to the wall, beating off the
crowd of his assailants, while the Macedonian nubleman Peucestes held
over bim the sacred shield which had been taken from the temple of
Athena at Ilium and was believed to have been carried in the Trojan War.
By the time that his army, frantic, had broken into the citadel, Alexander
was lying with a severe wound in his breast. The Macedonians believed
that their king was killed and gave way to a fury of blood-lust, sparing
neither woman nor child in the city. But Alexander recovered, and, as
soon as he could be moved, was carried by boat down the Hydraõtes, near
which river the town stood, to main camp at the confluence of the Hydraõtes
and the Acesires.
The terror of the European host had now broken the spirits of
the Mālavas, and their surviving headmen, as well as the headmen of
the Kshudrakas, came to the camp, tendering their submission. According
to the Greek historian, they urged that their c:ime was after all the love of
freedom, but that, Alexander being apparently more than man, they
were ready to obey any governor he might appoint and pay tribute.
They sent a thousand of their best men as hostages. When the armament
continued its progress down stream, Alexander left the Mālavas and
Kshudrakas attached to the satrapy of Philip; but the thousand hostages
he sent back to their homes.
Still down the unending stream the Europeans floated or marched,
through the territories of other tribes whose names our books record
in the form the Greek tongue gave them - Abastanes, Xathri, Ossadii -- who
submitted in prudence or by compulsion. At length they came to the
last confluence, where the Acesines, carrying in it the waters of the other
three rivers, united in those days with the Indus and a single vast stream
rolled down towards the ocean. Here again the armament halted, some
time in the cold season at the beginning of 325 B. C. The great shifting of
the river beds in the region makes it impossible to know the site to-day.
The point seemed one for planting another Hellenistic city. Alexander
foresaw it in the age to come a great place of traffic, rich and splendid.
This point too seemed to be a fit southern limit for the satrapy of Philip,
reaching nothwards as it did to the foothills of the Himālayas above
Takshaçilā. A change was also made in the governorship of the province
of the Hindu Kush (Paropanisadae). Tyriespes was replaced by another
great Irānián lord, Alexander's father-in-law, Oxyartes, who arrived in camp
about this time? .
1 The coupling of Oxyartes with Pithon as satrap of Sind is almost certainly a
textual corruption. See Vincent Smith, p. 99, note ). It is strange that Nieee (i, p. 503)
still accepts it without a no of suspicion,
## p. 338 (#376) ############################################
338
[ch.
MUSICANUS
The country along the Indus below the confluence presented the
Europeans with some conditions they had not met with in the parts
of India hitherto traversed. The Brāhmans here had more effective
ascendancy. The Greek observer saw men eating together in great com-
panies, and thought of the public meals of the Spartans'. In its political
organisation this region was unlike the country of free tribes, through
which the Europeans had been passing. Here once mɔre they found
principalities ruled by rājas, whose mutual enmity gave the foreigners
an opening. Alexander first sailed down the river to the 'Royal seat
(basileion) of the Sogdi, and here founded another Alexandria, marking out
docks again for the commerce which he fores uw under Greek initiative in
the new age. The site is unidentified and the name Sogdi furnishes a basis
for nothing more than unverifiable guessing. Already, it would appear,
Alexander designated Sind from the Indus confluence to the ocean as
a satrapy of the Enpire, and appointed a certain Pithon, son of Agenor,
to be its governor.
The greatest prince of the country between the confluence and the
delta was one whom the Greeks called Musicanus (Mousik anos) possibly a
title denoting the chief of the Mūshikas? . ' As in the case of the Paurava
and his fellow chiefs, the dread of the foreigner was apt to be less than
the dread of the strong neighbour. A native chief whom our texts call
Sambus or Sabus (Cambhu ? ), at feud with Musicanus, hastened to make
friends with the invaders and was nominated by Alexander satrap of some
hill district lying back from the river. Musicians seems to have con-
templated resistance ; he sent no envoys to the European king. But he
was not prepared for the rapidity of Alexander's movements, who was
again upon his enemies before they were aware. Submission seemed
the only way; the Europeans were admitted to the goodly city, which was
the rāja's capital', and a European garrison was put in its citadel. Subject
however to the supremacy of Alexander, Musicanus was left his former
state and authority, as the Paurava had been, and Ambhi and the rāja of
Abhisāra. Another chief of the district, Oxycanus' or 'Porticanus,'
attempted resistance, but found that the walls in which he trusted were frail
defence against the battering engines of the European. The people of
the land, our Greek author says, were paralysed by the belief in Alexander's
super-human power.
But still, as before, it proved difficult to extend friendship to one of
these jealous rājas without alienating his old rivals. Musicanus left upon
his throne made it seem to Sambus that he had given himself to the
foreigner for nothing. He now therefore renounced his allegiance. His
1 Strabo XV, C. 701,
2 This is extremely doubtful. The Mūshikaş who are mentioned in Sanskrit
literature belong to Southern India.
3 Not improbably Alor.
A
## p. 339 (#377) ############################################
Xv]
PATTALA
339
capital Sindimana (site unidentified) opened its gates Lowever at Alex-
ander's approach, and the little revolt was crushed.
But the Europeans in this region had more implacable enemies than
the native princes. The power behind the throne was the Brāhman com-
munity, and here for the first time we come upon an opposition inspired
by the conception of a national religion, the only germ to be found in
ancient times of the idea of Indian natio nality. It was the 'philosophers'
(i. e. the Brāhmans) who denounced the princes, if they submitted to
the foreigner, and goaded the free tribes into revolt". A ‘city of Brāhmans’2
had to be stormed, whilst the operations against Sambus were going on.
Musicanus now was induced to throw off allegiance. But it was the day
of the Yavana's power. The newly appointed governor of Sind, Pithon,
swept down upon him, and brought him a prisoner to the king. He was
treated as rebels were treated by the custom of the old Persian kings,
on whose seat Alexander sat. His body was hanged on a gibbet in
his own land. The Europeans knew, however, who were their worst
enemies, and their hand fell heavily upon the Brāhmans. They were put
to death wholesale ; their bodies too were hung up for the kites and
vultures by the roads to the unspeakable horror, we may believe, of the
people of the land.
On the lower Indus the coming of the Europeans was anticipated
with terror. At the point where the Indus in those days divided into its
two branches was situate the great city of Pattala. The author followed by
Diodorus (XVII, 104) stated that it wasruled, like Sparta, by two kings and
a council of elders. If that is so, it must have been one of these kings who
journeyed up stream to pay homage to Alexander, presumably the same
person whom one authority calls Moeris. But it was only to gain time.
As soon as he came back to Pattala, he and a large part of the population
abandoned the place and fled.
Before Alexander came to Pattala, the great European host which had
invaded India had begun to break up. From the country of Musicanus
about a third of the infantry, portions of the other arms, and all the
elephants which had been acquired in India, were put under Craterus,
to march home by way of Kandahār and Seistān. With the remainder
Alexander continued his course down stream. It was about the middle of
July 325, when the Europeans reached Pattala. They found everything
deserted. The fugitive population however was overtaken by Alexander's
emissaries and persuaded for the most part to return. Pattala, commanding
1 Plutarch, Alex. 59.
2 Diod. XVII, 103, 1.
3 Arr. VI, 16, 5.
4 Near Bahmanābād according to Vincent Smith ; about 30 miles S. E. of Hyder.
ābād, according to Holdich.
5 Curt. IX, 8, 28.
611 epi Kuvos emitol, Strabo XV, C, 692 ; cf. Anspach, note 414,
a
3
## p. 340 (#378) ############################################
340
[CH.
ALEXANDER THE GREAT
ocean.
the two outlets of the Indus to the ocean, was another place for which
Alexander forecast a great commercial future, and new walls were soon
rising round its citadel under Hephaestion's direction. Pithon the satrap
had been left higher up stream to draft the European soldiers who were to
form the nucleus of the population in the new cities of his province, and to
stamp out any embers of revolt which might be still smouldering. Alex-
ander himself with the handiest ships set off to explore the western
arm of the river. It was only after some more or less unfortunate
attempts at navigation on their own account that the Europeans discovered
some natives of the deserted country, who steered the vessels down to the
It was probably at a point near the medieval Dēball that this
branch of the river then reached it. There the tide was
a new and
alarming phenomenon to men who knew only the Mediterranean. On two
little islands, one in the mouth of the river and one lying outside in
the Indian Ocean, the Yavana king made offerings to the gods who had
been prescribed to him by the Egyptian oracle of Amun in the African
desert. Then he sailed a little way into the open sea, and shed into the
Indian Ocean the blood of bulls sacrificed to the Greek god Poseidon.
Alexander returned to Pattala, to find Pithon arrived there, his task
accomplished ; and Hephaestion now set about the construction of quays
and docks against the city's future greatness. The king explored the
eastern branch of the river which ran out probably near the modern
Lakhpat? . Everywhere his quick eye seized the point subservient to the
realisation of that image which fired his imagination - the Indus a great
a
highway of the world's traffic with a chain of flourishing semi-Greek
mercantile cities. On the shores of a lake through which he passed (the
Rann of Cutch ? ) he designed more quays and docks ; on the coast,
he mapped out places for wells. Then he again returned to Pattala and
sent bodies of men down the river to begin the work.
The plan which Alexander had formed for his return to the West
involved his own marching through the sands of Makrān, the scathern
border of the Empire, and the passage of the fleet along the coast from the
mouth of the Indus to the Persian Gulf. The latter enterprise was to be
directed by the Cretan Nearchus, who had been responsible for the
navigation of the river.
Some time apparently in September 325' India saw the Yavana
columns move out of Pattala on the homeward road. It was some three
1 Debal itself has now disappeared : its site was near the existing shrine of Pir
Patho, see Vincent Smith, p. 104, and Tomaschek, p. 9.
2 Tomaschek, Topographischo Erlauterung, p. 6.
3 General Haig says (Indus Delta Country, p. 22) that the ideas of wells in this
region is an absurdity. The shifting of the coast-line makes it a problem, to vzhat
region exactly the statement of o ancient author applies.
4 About Sept. 1, Anspach.
## p. 341 (#379) ############################################
xv]
THE RETURN THROUGH GEDROSIA
341
years and a half since the brilliant figure of the warrior king had issued
from the highlands of Kandahār to enter the confines of the Indian world:
for the last year and a half he had flashed, a more than human wonder,
before the eyes of the peoples of the Punjab and Sind ; now his meteoric
appearance in India was coming to its end, and obscurity falls once more
on Indian history. Alexander started with the land force, except such
troops as were left with the satraps in the Indian provinces, for the river
Hab? . The naval armament remained at Pattala with Nearchus till the
latter part of October, when the monsoon would change. Alexander
again, when he approached the Hab, found the country empty ; the
tribesmen, a people of Dravidian stock, Arava, whom the Greeks called
Arabitae, had deserted their villages in terror. The Europeans crossed the
river (now the frontier of India and Baluchistān) into the country of
the Oritae, who still, being Dravidians, belonged ethnologically to India”.
Here some opposition, ineffectual enough, was made to the passage of the
foreigners. One of the large villages of the Oritae, Rhambacia? , was
occupied and destined for another Greek Alexandria'. Its new population
was compounded largely of people from the Pashtu country (Arachosians).
When Alexander passed on into the country of the Gedrcsians
(crossing from the basin of the Purali, into that of the Phur) he left a
European satrap, Apollophanes, to rule the territory of the Oritae, and one
of his chief captains Leonnatus remained temporarily with a force in
the district to drive home upon the Oritae that they were now the subjects
of a great Empire, and to carry out the scheme of Greek colonisation.
Leonnatus had some stiff fighting - one battle in which the loss on the
native side is said to have been 6000 killed, whilst on the European side the
loss, though numerically insignificant, included the satrap Apollophanes.
Alexander, having crossed into Gedrosia, kept down as near the coast
as possible, in order to dig wells and establish depots for food which might
serve the feet. It was a burning and arid land, rich only in aromatic
shrubs, and the barrier of the Malan range seems to have forced the
European army into a still more appalling region inland. They would have
reached it by way of the Hingol valley, in which the Hinglāj shrine is now
the last great place of Hindu pilgrimage towards the West.
In entering that waterless inferno, from which he emerged, sixty days
after leaving the country of the Oritae, with decimated forces, Alexander
passes
out of the field of Indian history. And yet there is one scene which
1 Tomaschek, Topographische Erläuterung, p. 16.
: Tomaschek connects their name with the Tamil ur 'village,' 'place', Tojo.
graphische Erlanterung, p. 19.
3 Sonmiāni, according to Tomaschek.
4 This is identifying Rhambacia with the Alexandria of Diodorus XVII, 104, 8.
5 Curtius, IX, 10, 7.
>
## p. 342 (#380) ############################################
342
[CH.
ALEXANDER THE GREAT
took place that year in Persia of interest to the Indian historian. The
ascetic from Takshaçilā, whom the Greeks called Kalanos, continued to be
a notable figure amongst the men of war and philosophers surrounding the
king. Suddenly in Persia he announced his resolution to live no longer.
Nothing that Alexander could say availed to move him. Then by the
king's command a pyre was erected for the sage and he was conducted to
it with pomp. He was borne on a litter, garlanded in the Indian way and
chanting in a tongue which the Yavanas could not understand. He was
chanting hymns, some Indians explained, in praise of the gods. In sight of
all the army he ascended the pyre and adopted the due posture. The
pyre had been covered with gold and silver vessels and precious stuffs, and
these the Indian first distributed to his friends. Then, as the torch was
applied, the Yavana trumpets sounded all together, and the army shouted
as they were wout to shout going into battle, and the Indian elephants
uttered their peculiar cry. As the flames mounted and wrapped the figure
of the sage, the onlookers saw it still motionless. This was the way in
which Kalanos chose to take leave of the Yavanas? .
Nearchus, according to Alexander's original plan, was to have taken
station at the eastern mouth of the Indus and set sail at the end of October
(325) when the monsoon changed. But before Alexander left, it may have
appeared that such a station would be exposed to an attack from the mass
of Indian fugitives who had taken refuge in the jungles east of Sind.
Alexander at any rate transferred the fleet to the western mouth, to wait
for the favourable wind. But even here, as soon as Alexander was gone,
revolts broke out, making the position of the Europeans untenable, and
Nearchus was obliged to start, sooner than had been intended, during the
last few days of September? .
The account which Nearchus left of his voyage lay before Strabo and
Arrian, as well as the subsidiary, more anecdotal, account of Onescritus,
who acted as pilot. Through later writers we still possess an abstract of
the book of Nearchus. To fit the names in it to modern sites is, of course,
an interesting geographical puzzle, which will never perhaps be made out
with certainty. The place from which the fleet started, “Wooden Town'
(Xyline Polis) the changes in the coast line bave made indiscoverable. The
haven to which the Greeks came after some days' sail, and which they
named ‘Alexander's Haven,' perhaps corresponded in position with Karāchi.
Here the Greeks waited twenty-five days for the wind to change. They
built a stone wall round their camp on shore to protect it from the Arava
tribesmen, and spent their enforced leisure in fishing up oysters and mussels
from the sea.
At the mouth of the Hab river (Arabis) they again came to
a good harbour (Pliny's statement that Nearchus built a town there
1 Arr. VII, 3 ; Strabo XV, C, 717.
2 Strabo XV, C. 721.
;
## p. 343 (#381) ############################################
Xv]
THE GREEK SATRAPIES
343
is probably a misunderstanding). Beyond the Hab river they coasted
along the country of the Oritae, where Leonnatus either just before or soon
after fought his decisive battle with the tribesmen. Nearchus does not
seem to have detected the mouth of the Purali, where Hephaestion had just
traced the walls of an Alexandria, but at Cocala, probably somewhere near,
fresh stores had been deposited for the fleet by Alexander's order, and
there was an exchange of men between Nearchus and Leonnatus. At the
mouth of the river Tomerus (Hingol) the Greeks found some 600 half-naked
inhabitants ‘living in stuffy huts' who made show of hostility, but were
easily put to flight by the mail-clad Europeans.
Here they remained five
days to repair the ships, and then sailed on past the promontory of Malana
(modern Rās Malan) the limit of the Oritae and of India'.
Alexander had come and gone. Was the European irruption a violent
episode which left India unchanged ? And, if so, was that due to an
essential unchangeableness in India under impact from without ? One may
notice first that nothing was farther from Alexander's own thought than
that his invasion of India was a mere raid. He left the Punjab and Sind
solidly attached, he believed, to his world-empire. Let us glance once more
at the conditions there in the year 324 B. C. The country fell into these
divisions. There was first the satrapy of Philip the son of Machatas. It is
impossible to make out with certainty what its confines were. Philip first
appears (unless he is identical with the commandant of the garrison in
Pushkalāvatī”) as satrap in Takshaçilā', and we gather that there was then
combined under his authority the principality of Āmbhi and what had been
the satrapy of Nicanor in the lower Kābul Valley', as far as the passes over
the Hindu Kush into Bacteria”. He accompanies Alexander's expedition
down the Hydaspes (Jhelum) and is made satrap of a province extending as
far south as the confluence of the Indus and Acesines (Chenāb). We do
not however know whether this new appointment was in addition to, or in
lieu of, his previous satrapy. If the former, his extensive satrapy continued
to embrace the principality of Āmbhi, and we do not know how the double
rule of Macedonian satrap and native prince was adjusted. A second
division was the satrapy of Pithon the son of Agenor, covering Sind from
the Indus confluence to the ocean and extending westward to the Hab. A
third was the large principality of the Paurava prince, extending from the
Hydaspes (Jhelum) to the Hyphasis (Beās). Here there was no division of
authority between prince and satrap, but the Indian acted in both capacities
1 Sir Thomas Holdich's book The Gates of India, reconstructs the voyage of
Nearchus on the old hypothesis that the Arabis is the Purali. The important work of
Tomaschek Sir Thomas does not seem to know.
2 Arr. IV, 28, 6.
3 Arr. V, 8, 3,
4 Arr. IV, 28, 6.
5 Arr. VI, 2, 3 ; Anspach deletes ws et! Bak glov Yns, note 200.
6 Arr. VI, 15, 2.
## p. 344 (#382) ############################################
344
[CH.
ALEXANDER THE GREAT
himself. : A fourth satrapy lay outside India, but within the river system of
the Indus - that of the Paropanisidae (the Hindu Kush) with Alexandria-
under-the-Caucasus for its capital. This was the satrapy held by Oxyartes,
Alexander's father-in-law. There was finally a fifth district in somewhat
looser connexion with the Empire, Abhisāra in Kashmir, whose ruler, as we
' have seen, had been enabled by Macedonian influence to establish his
authority over the smaller rājas in his neighbourhood.
The European rule was supported by an army of occupation. Its
numbers are not told us, but it included Macedonians and Greek mercen-
aries. Besides these Philip had at his disposal a considerable body of
Thracians. The commander of this corps was a Macedonian destined to
play a conspicuous part in the near future, Eudamus the son of Crateuas,
a native of the region south of the Ostrovo Lake, and brother of one of the
Seven who constituted the king's special body-guarda.
The army of occupation was, no doubt, in large part distributed
through the new cities, which were intended in Alexander's design, not only
to give the European root in the country, but to quicken India through
Greek intelligence and enterprise to new developments of commercial
activity and material splendour. There these little bodies of Europeans
remained, when Alexander was gone, enclosed within their fresh-built walls,
subject, it would seem, to Macedonian satraps but not to the native
princes', urged by the king's command to build docks and quays and
reproduce the life of Greek cities upon the rivers of India.
We know, of course, that Alexander's dream came to nothing. The
European in India faded away. But it is a mistake when we judge the
dream by its actual result. For the experiment was never really tried ; it
was frustrated at its inception by an event which no one could have
foreseen, - Alexander's premature death, without an adequate heir, less than
two years after he quitted India. The realisation of the dream all depended
upon the Empire's holding together for a century or two. Flad Alexander
lived to a normal age, there is no reason why it should not have done so.
As it was, the rapidly constructed fabric, its cement still soft, fell quickly
to pieces. If a military occupation of eight years or so left no permanent
trace upon the north-west of India, we can hardly infer from that the
essential unreceptiveness of India for Hellenism. Had the occupation been
prolonged for a series of generations, the result might have been very
different. The idea, ineradicable from modern journalism, that 'the East'
(whatever that vague term may denote) is by its nature impervious to the
1 Plut. Alex. 60.
2 Arr. VI, 15, 2; 28, 4; Curt. X, 1, 21 ; Diod. XIX, 14,1.
3 In colonias in Indis conditas Pithon Agenoris filius mittitur,' Justin XIII, 4,
21, quoted by Niese (p. 504).
## p. 345 (#383) ############################################
xv]
CONSEQUENCE OF THE INVASION
345
>
rationalistic culture of ancient Greece and modern Europe is not supported
by the facts, either by what happened in ancient Syria, or what happened
in the Muhammadan kingdoms of the Middle Ages, or by what is happen-
ing to-day in India, China and Japan. When the rest of the East, after the
passage of phalanx and legion, 'plunged in thought again,' it was thought
profoundly modified by the Greek schoolmaster who followed in the
soldier's train. In India Hellenic rationalism? would have come into
contact with more elaborate homegrown systems of imaginative thought
or intuition than the nearer East afforded. What would have happened we
cannot say ; but that the contact would have left either unaffected is
highly improbable.
The European invasion of India was an event of too great magnitude
not to have far-reaching consequences. As other overflowings of foreign
conquests have done, it swept away internal barriers which prevented the
unification of the lands concerned. The confederacies of free tribes, which
had maintained tleir proud isolation from other political systems, were left
utterly broken. Smaller principalities were swallowed up in a realm such
as that given by Alexander to the Paurava. This, no doubt, made it a
simpler matter for the Maurya king a few years later to take these count-
ries into his great Indian empire.
The contact of India with the Greek world did not cease with the
disruption of Alexander's empire. What can be traced of later political
connexions between Indian and Hellenistic kings will be exhibited in
another chapter. Any influences which can ultimately be shown to have
reached India from the Greek West, whether through the medium of
Seleucid or Bacterian kings or of the Roman Empire, which took up the
inheritance of Hellenism in Asia, may be regarded as consequences of the
work of Alexander. If they were not consequences of the work which
Alexander did in India, they were, in any case, consequences of the work
which he did when he established Hellenism in Irān, Syria, Asia Minor, and
Egypt. India indeed and the Greek world only touched each other on
their fringes, and there was never a chance for elements of the Hellenistic
tradition to strike root in India, as a part of Hellenism struck root in the
Nearer East and was still vital in the Muhammadan, largely Hellenistic,
culture of the Middle Ages. There are, however, the two unquestionable
cases of transmission, which will be noted in subsequent chapters -
the artistic types conveyed by the school of Gandhāra, and the Greek
astronomy which superseded the primitive native system in the latter part
of the fourth century A. D.
When Alexander died, it was plain that the imperial system in India
was as yet anything but secure. It was not only a case of the people of the
1 A chance light is thrown on Alexander's intentions 'Ichthyophagos vetuit
piscibus vivere,' Plin. N, H. VI. § 95 ; cf. Curt. VIII, 8, 12.
.
## p. 346 (#384) ############################################
346
[CH.
ANCIENT GREEK COINS IN INDIA
land proving restive; the Europeans themselves did not form a harmonious
community. Although thousands of Greeks had fought, as mercenaries or
allies, side by side with the Macedonians in the conquest of Asia and to
the Asiatics, no doubt, appeared indistinguishably as Yavanas, neither
kindred people loved the other. It was specially Greek veterans whom
Alexander had settled in his new eastern cities. In Bacteria and Sogdiāna
we know that they had been settled very much against their will and tried
at the first opportunity to make their way home. Their settlement in the
remote colonies was sometimes a punishment for disaffection”. We may
conclude that the Greeks who had been planted in the Punjab did not find
their surroundings congenial. Within a few months apparently of
Alexander's departure, the Greek mercenaries under Philip rose in mutiny.
Philip received a mortal wound. Instantly his Macedonian guards avenged
his death upon the Greeks. Then orders came from Alexander that till a
satrap was appointed to succeed Philip, the province should be administered
by the rāja of Takshaçilā and Eudamus, the commander of the Thracians.
This provisional arrangement was apparently still in force when the news
reached India in the summer of 323 B. c. that the great king was dead.
Suddenly in Babylon his designs for conquest and organisation had come
to an end.
ATHENIAN AND MACEDONIAN COINS IN INDIA
It is difficult to say how far the currency of India was immediately
affected by Alexander's conquest. In the end, of course, it must have
been profoundly modified by the disappearance of the Persian sigloi,
the issue of which did not long survive the overthrow of Darius III, as
well as by the stimulus which native art undoubtedly received as a result
of the Greek invasion. But the change did not come all at once, and the
task of determining the exact course that events followed is rendered
virtually impossible by the lack of trustworthy evidence. It is, indeed,
often stated that India was one of the many quarters of the ancient
world into which the silver tetradrachms of Athens made their way, and
also that imitations of Athenian coins are found from time to time in
the Punjab. If these statements could be confirmed, they would furnish at
least one definite clue. A demand for local copies would only arise
when the supply of originals ran short, and such a shortage could most
readily be accounted for by connecting it with the paralysis that overtook
the Athenian mint when the city was finally crushed beneath the heel
of Macedon. Indian imitations might, therefore, be assigned with
reasonable confidence to the period of Macedonian supremacy.
1 Arr. V, 27, 5.
2 Justin XII, 5, 8, and 13.
As a
## p. 347 (#385) ############################################
xv]
ATHENIAN AND MACEDONIAN TYPES
347
matter of fact, however, enquiry has failed to bring to light any trustworthy
records of the actual discovery of ‘owls' in India, while the imitations
acquired by the British Museum at Rāwalpindi appear to have been
brought without exception from the northern side of the frontier and
thus to be of Central Asian, rather than of Indian, ori gin. Precisely
the same difficulty besets any attempt to establish an intimate connexion
between India itself and those coins of a Macedonian character which
are usually described as being of Indian provenance ; in all definitely
ascertained cases the ‘find-spot' lies beyond the Hindu Kush. Nevertheless,
as fresh testimony may at any moment emerge, it seems desirable to
enumerate briefly the more important of the issues concerned.
The imitations of Athenian tetradrachms fall into two distinct
groups. The first of these (Pl. I, 7) appromixates fairly closely to the
original model. One variety, however, -represented both in the Bodleian
and in the British Museum (Pl. I, 8) - reads, not A TE, but AIT, which
Head interprets as perhaps referring to the Aigloi, whom Herodotus (111,92)
mentions as dwelling to the north of the Bactrians. The second group
(Pl. I, 9, 10) is characterised by a softer style, by the presence of the
monogram 1, and by the use of a bunch of grapes as a symbol. The
Y'
a
difference between the two is emphasised by the fact that, whereas the
dies from which coins belonging to the first are struck have lain at all
conceivable angles relatively to one another, the types of the coins belong-
ing to the second are adjusted (^ D with a nicety which points to the
employment of a hinge or of some equally effective mechanical contrivance.
Further while the first group appears to consist solely of tetradrachms, the
second includes also didrachms and drachms (P1, 1, 11, 12). These
smaller denominations are remarkable in that they are not minted, like
the tetradrachms, on the Attic standard, which has a maximum weight of
67·5 grains (4:37 grammes) to the drachm, but on a standard in which
the drachm seems to have weighed at the outside no more than 58 grains
(3. 75 grammes). In this and other respects they link themselves naturally
to a set of drachms and diobols which are struck from regularly adjusted
dies ( 1 ), but in which the place of the Athenian owl is taken by
an eagle, looking backwards (Pl. I, 13). On the drachms and diobols just
referred to, the bunch of grapes still figures as a symbol. In one instance
it is accompanied by a caduceus.
Some ground for thinking that at least the smaller Athenian
imitations were not unfamiliar in the north of India is furnished by
a notable series of silver drachms of Attic weight (Pl. I, 17), for the actual
finding of which in the Punjab General Cunningham is able to vouch.
They are struck from regularly adjusted dies ( Î V), and these dies have
been cut by a Greek artist who signs himself M or MN. The obverse
## p. 348 (#386) ############################################
318
[ch.
ANCIENT GREEK COINS IN INDIA
shows the head of a warrior wearing a close-fitting helmet, wreathed
with olive, while the reverse has a cock standing to right with a caduceus
behind. The legend is ERØYTOY. Apart from the circumstance that
a unique trihemiobol in the Berlin Museum has the head, of Athena, instead
of that of a warrior, the coins leave a general impression of having been
designed after an Athenian prototype. This and the absence of a royal
title go to indicate a date not long subsequent to Alexander's expedition, a
conclusion which in its turn fits in well with the current interpretation
of the inscription. Sophytes (Saubhūti) has been by universal consent
identified with the Sopeithes of Arrian (v1, 2, 2) and Strabo (xv, 699). If
this view is right, his coins may be regarded as a very direct memorial of
Greek influence in India.
A few coins with the name of Alexander himself have also been
classed as Indian. Thus a bronze piece, not distinguishable from his
ordinary issue except that it is of squarish shape, has for many years been
tacitly accepted as proof that the conqueror issued money of his own in
India, conforming so far to local custom as to adopt the native fashion of
striking the coins on blanks cut from oblong strips or bars. But the piece,
which is now in Berlin, stands absolutely alone. Beyond the shape, there
is not a particle of evidence to suggest association with the East. And
closer scrutiny points to the shape being no more than an accidental freak,
the result of awkward handling by some workman at a Western mint.
A group of silver tetradrachms deserves more serious consideration. They
have on the obverse a head of Zeus, and on the reverse an eagle on a
thunderbolt, accompanied by the legend AEINAPOY (Pl. I, 14). The
types are Macedonian, and the coins were long believed to be European
and to represent Alexander's earliest mintage. There can, however, be
little doubt that Head is right in claiming them for the East. The significance
of the symbol in the field, which he was the first to recognise as a satrapal
tiara, is unmistakable. Again, the only specimen whose history is known,
came from Rāwalpindi, while a diobol of similar types is said to have been
in the hands of a dealer in Tashkand in 1906. Finally, although the die-
positions are irregular, there are points of contact with the second group
of Athenian imitations described above. To say nothing of the eagle with
reverted head, certain subsidiary symbols - an olive-spray with leaves, and
--
berry, and a vine-branch with grapes - are
to both ; and both
are apparently struck on the same abnormal standard, the average weight
of three of the Macedonian tetradrachms being 2175 grains (14. 09
grammes). But, if the coins in question are Eastern, it does not follow
1 This is the emphatic opinion of Prof. Regling, who has been good enough to
examine the original carefully. His view is fully borne out by a cast which he has
kindly supplie l.
common
## p. 349 (#387) ############################################
Xv]
DOUBLE DARICS
349
>
that they are Indian. On the contrary, the evidence of provenance, slight
though it be, is all in favour of Central Asia. And so, too, is that of the
peculiar weight standard. When this standard next emerges in that quarter
of the world, it is among coins struck by Antiochus I during his viceroyalty
or in other words, after Seleucus Nicator had formally renounced his
pretensions to the Punjab as part of his bargain with Chandragupta.
inference is that the district whose needs tetradrachms of the sort were
meant to meet, lay beyond the confines of India.
None of the pieces we have been discussing bear the King's title.
Both title and name (Bu. G! os Alseavdo pv) have, however, been read
into the monogram Æ, which occurs on an extraordinary silver decadrachm
of Attic weight now in the British Museum (Pl. I, 16). The obverse type
is a horseman, with lance at rest, charging down upon a retreating
elephant, on the back of which are two men turning round to face their
pursuer. On the reverse, beside the monogram, is a tall figure, wearing
cloak and cap, and having a sword by his side, standing to left holding a
thunderbolt and a spear. In spite of certain features which are not alto-
gether satisfactory, the genuineness of the coin has been unhesitatingly
accepted by Head and Gardner, and from such experienced judges it would
be very rash to differ. Gardner, who was the first to publish it (N. C. ,
1887, p. 177), was disposed to give it to Bactria and to connect it with 'some
notable victory won by a Greek King of Bactria over the invading hordes
of Yueh-chi in the second century B. C. ' Head, on the other hand, comes
to the conclusion, ‘after a careful study of the fabric. . . that it belongs to
Alexander's own time, and that it records the historical event of his
invasion of the Punjab in 326 B. C. ' He sees in the standing figure a
representation of Alexander as Zeus, while he puts forward the interesting
suggestion that the lance is being wielded, not by the horseman, but by
the rearmost of the two elephant-riders, and that consequently the scene
depicted is the retreat of Porus and his pursuit by Taxiles, exactly as
recorded by Arrian (v, 18). The coin, he thinks, may have been struck by
Taxiles himself at his capital city Takshaçilā. Unfortunately this hypothesis
is not supported by the 'find-spot' of the decadrachm. It was discovered
at Khullum in Bukhāra.
A similar inconclusive result awaits any endeavour to sift the asser-
tions so frequently advanced as to the circulation, and even the striking,
of double darics in India. These fine gold coins (Pl. I, 6) are, in the strict
sense, Persian. But it is hardly likely that any of them were minted until
after the defeat of the last of the Achaemenids by Alexander. It is certain
that the great majority bear Greek monograms or letters, and that they
were issued at Babylon, and possibly elsewhere, by the satraps of the
## p. 350 (#388) ############################################
350
[сн
ANCIENT GREEK COINS IN INDIA
Macedonian conqueror. That they were popular in the East is beyond
question. Whether they made their way into India is another matter.
The statement that they were struck there has nothing whatever to confirm
it. Nearly all of the specimens in the British Museum were acquired at
Rāwalpindi, but the real source seems to have been the rich find or series
of finds made about 1877 and 1878 in Bukhāra, ‘eight marches beyond the
Oxus, at an old fort on the tongue of land formed by two joining rivers. '
The precise locality appears to have been Kabadian, a town on the
Kapinahan, in the Sogdiāna.
## p. 351 (#389) ############################################
CHAPTER XVI
INDIA IN EARLY GREEK AND LATIN LITERATURE
In this chapter we shift our point of view. We no longer try to trans-
fer ourselves to ancient India and see for ourselves what is going on there :
we ask instead what impression this magnitude, India, made upon another
people, the Hellenes on the shores of the Mediterranean, the progenitors
of our modern European rationalistic civilisation.
Major G. H. Raverty (J. A. S. B. for 1892, pt. i) have a mainly negative value in showing
the rashness of the older identifications rather than a positive value in establishing new
ones. If either the statements in our texts had been loss vague or the river beds less
changeable the case would not have been so hopeless.
4 Being in the country of the Mālavas, north of the confluence of the Acesines
and Hydraūtes, the town cannot have been Multān, which lies south of the confluence.
## p. 336 (#373) ############################################
## p. 336 (#374) ############################################
ވެޙިހު
1
!
. .
:
iii);
## p. 337 (#375) ############################################
XV
SUBMISSION OF MĀLAVAS
337
)
citadel wall among the first, stood there for one moment in his shining
armour, a mark for the defenders' darts, and then leapt down almost alone
on the inner side. There he stood with his back to the wall, beating off the
crowd of his assailants, while the Macedonian nubleman Peucestes held
over bim the sacred shield which had been taken from the temple of
Athena at Ilium and was believed to have been carried in the Trojan War.
By the time that his army, frantic, had broken into the citadel, Alexander
was lying with a severe wound in his breast. The Macedonians believed
that their king was killed and gave way to a fury of blood-lust, sparing
neither woman nor child in the city. But Alexander recovered, and, as
soon as he could be moved, was carried by boat down the Hydraõtes, near
which river the town stood, to main camp at the confluence of the Hydraõtes
and the Acesires.
The terror of the European host had now broken the spirits of
the Mālavas, and their surviving headmen, as well as the headmen of
the Kshudrakas, came to the camp, tendering their submission. According
to the Greek historian, they urged that their c:ime was after all the love of
freedom, but that, Alexander being apparently more than man, they
were ready to obey any governor he might appoint and pay tribute.
They sent a thousand of their best men as hostages. When the armament
continued its progress down stream, Alexander left the Mālavas and
Kshudrakas attached to the satrapy of Philip; but the thousand hostages
he sent back to their homes.
Still down the unending stream the Europeans floated or marched,
through the territories of other tribes whose names our books record
in the form the Greek tongue gave them - Abastanes, Xathri, Ossadii -- who
submitted in prudence or by compulsion. At length they came to the
last confluence, where the Acesines, carrying in it the waters of the other
three rivers, united in those days with the Indus and a single vast stream
rolled down towards the ocean. Here again the armament halted, some
time in the cold season at the beginning of 325 B. C. The great shifting of
the river beds in the region makes it impossible to know the site to-day.
The point seemed one for planting another Hellenistic city. Alexander
foresaw it in the age to come a great place of traffic, rich and splendid.
This point too seemed to be a fit southern limit for the satrapy of Philip,
reaching nothwards as it did to the foothills of the Himālayas above
Takshaçilā. A change was also made in the governorship of the province
of the Hindu Kush (Paropanisadae). Tyriespes was replaced by another
great Irānián lord, Alexander's father-in-law, Oxyartes, who arrived in camp
about this time? .
1 The coupling of Oxyartes with Pithon as satrap of Sind is almost certainly a
textual corruption. See Vincent Smith, p. 99, note ). It is strange that Nieee (i, p. 503)
still accepts it without a no of suspicion,
## p. 338 (#376) ############################################
338
[ch.
MUSICANUS
The country along the Indus below the confluence presented the
Europeans with some conditions they had not met with in the parts
of India hitherto traversed. The Brāhmans here had more effective
ascendancy. The Greek observer saw men eating together in great com-
panies, and thought of the public meals of the Spartans'. In its political
organisation this region was unlike the country of free tribes, through
which the Europeans had been passing. Here once mɔre they found
principalities ruled by rājas, whose mutual enmity gave the foreigners
an opening. Alexander first sailed down the river to the 'Royal seat
(basileion) of the Sogdi, and here founded another Alexandria, marking out
docks again for the commerce which he fores uw under Greek initiative in
the new age. The site is unidentified and the name Sogdi furnishes a basis
for nothing more than unverifiable guessing. Already, it would appear,
Alexander designated Sind from the Indus confluence to the ocean as
a satrapy of the Enpire, and appointed a certain Pithon, son of Agenor,
to be its governor.
The greatest prince of the country between the confluence and the
delta was one whom the Greeks called Musicanus (Mousik anos) possibly a
title denoting the chief of the Mūshikas? . ' As in the case of the Paurava
and his fellow chiefs, the dread of the foreigner was apt to be less than
the dread of the strong neighbour. A native chief whom our texts call
Sambus or Sabus (Cambhu ? ), at feud with Musicanus, hastened to make
friends with the invaders and was nominated by Alexander satrap of some
hill district lying back from the river. Musicians seems to have con-
templated resistance ; he sent no envoys to the European king. But he
was not prepared for the rapidity of Alexander's movements, who was
again upon his enemies before they were aware. Submission seemed
the only way; the Europeans were admitted to the goodly city, which was
the rāja's capital', and a European garrison was put in its citadel. Subject
however to the supremacy of Alexander, Musicanus was left his former
state and authority, as the Paurava had been, and Ambhi and the rāja of
Abhisāra. Another chief of the district, Oxycanus' or 'Porticanus,'
attempted resistance, but found that the walls in which he trusted were frail
defence against the battering engines of the European. The people of
the land, our Greek author says, were paralysed by the belief in Alexander's
super-human power.
But still, as before, it proved difficult to extend friendship to one of
these jealous rājas without alienating his old rivals. Musicanus left upon
his throne made it seem to Sambus that he had given himself to the
foreigner for nothing. He now therefore renounced his allegiance. His
1 Strabo XV, C. 701,
2 This is extremely doubtful. The Mūshikaş who are mentioned in Sanskrit
literature belong to Southern India.
3 Not improbably Alor.
A
## p. 339 (#377) ############################################
Xv]
PATTALA
339
capital Sindimana (site unidentified) opened its gates Lowever at Alex-
ander's approach, and the little revolt was crushed.
But the Europeans in this region had more implacable enemies than
the native princes. The power behind the throne was the Brāhman com-
munity, and here for the first time we come upon an opposition inspired
by the conception of a national religion, the only germ to be found in
ancient times of the idea of Indian natio nality. It was the 'philosophers'
(i. e. the Brāhmans) who denounced the princes, if they submitted to
the foreigner, and goaded the free tribes into revolt". A ‘city of Brāhmans’2
had to be stormed, whilst the operations against Sambus were going on.
Musicanus now was induced to throw off allegiance. But it was the day
of the Yavana's power. The newly appointed governor of Sind, Pithon,
swept down upon him, and brought him a prisoner to the king. He was
treated as rebels were treated by the custom of the old Persian kings,
on whose seat Alexander sat. His body was hanged on a gibbet in
his own land. The Europeans knew, however, who were their worst
enemies, and their hand fell heavily upon the Brāhmans. They were put
to death wholesale ; their bodies too were hung up for the kites and
vultures by the roads to the unspeakable horror, we may believe, of the
people of the land.
On the lower Indus the coming of the Europeans was anticipated
with terror. At the point where the Indus in those days divided into its
two branches was situate the great city of Pattala. The author followed by
Diodorus (XVII, 104) stated that it wasruled, like Sparta, by two kings and
a council of elders. If that is so, it must have been one of these kings who
journeyed up stream to pay homage to Alexander, presumably the same
person whom one authority calls Moeris. But it was only to gain time.
As soon as he came back to Pattala, he and a large part of the population
abandoned the place and fled.
Before Alexander came to Pattala, the great European host which had
invaded India had begun to break up. From the country of Musicanus
about a third of the infantry, portions of the other arms, and all the
elephants which had been acquired in India, were put under Craterus,
to march home by way of Kandahār and Seistān. With the remainder
Alexander continued his course down stream. It was about the middle of
July 325, when the Europeans reached Pattala. They found everything
deserted. The fugitive population however was overtaken by Alexander's
emissaries and persuaded for the most part to return. Pattala, commanding
1 Plutarch, Alex. 59.
2 Diod. XVII, 103, 1.
3 Arr. VI, 16, 5.
4 Near Bahmanābād according to Vincent Smith ; about 30 miles S. E. of Hyder.
ābād, according to Holdich.
5 Curt. IX, 8, 28.
611 epi Kuvos emitol, Strabo XV, C, 692 ; cf. Anspach, note 414,
a
3
## p. 340 (#378) ############################################
340
[CH.
ALEXANDER THE GREAT
ocean.
the two outlets of the Indus to the ocean, was another place for which
Alexander forecast a great commercial future, and new walls were soon
rising round its citadel under Hephaestion's direction. Pithon the satrap
had been left higher up stream to draft the European soldiers who were to
form the nucleus of the population in the new cities of his province, and to
stamp out any embers of revolt which might be still smouldering. Alex-
ander himself with the handiest ships set off to explore the western
arm of the river. It was only after some more or less unfortunate
attempts at navigation on their own account that the Europeans discovered
some natives of the deserted country, who steered the vessels down to the
It was probably at a point near the medieval Dēball that this
branch of the river then reached it. There the tide was
a new and
alarming phenomenon to men who knew only the Mediterranean. On two
little islands, one in the mouth of the river and one lying outside in
the Indian Ocean, the Yavana king made offerings to the gods who had
been prescribed to him by the Egyptian oracle of Amun in the African
desert. Then he sailed a little way into the open sea, and shed into the
Indian Ocean the blood of bulls sacrificed to the Greek god Poseidon.
Alexander returned to Pattala, to find Pithon arrived there, his task
accomplished ; and Hephaestion now set about the construction of quays
and docks against the city's future greatness. The king explored the
eastern branch of the river which ran out probably near the modern
Lakhpat? . Everywhere his quick eye seized the point subservient to the
realisation of that image which fired his imagination - the Indus a great
a
highway of the world's traffic with a chain of flourishing semi-Greek
mercantile cities. On the shores of a lake through which he passed (the
Rann of Cutch ? ) he designed more quays and docks ; on the coast,
he mapped out places for wells. Then he again returned to Pattala and
sent bodies of men down the river to begin the work.
The plan which Alexander had formed for his return to the West
involved his own marching through the sands of Makrān, the scathern
border of the Empire, and the passage of the fleet along the coast from the
mouth of the Indus to the Persian Gulf. The latter enterprise was to be
directed by the Cretan Nearchus, who had been responsible for the
navigation of the river.
Some time apparently in September 325' India saw the Yavana
columns move out of Pattala on the homeward road. It was some three
1 Debal itself has now disappeared : its site was near the existing shrine of Pir
Patho, see Vincent Smith, p. 104, and Tomaschek, p. 9.
2 Tomaschek, Topographischo Erlauterung, p. 6.
3 General Haig says (Indus Delta Country, p. 22) that the ideas of wells in this
region is an absurdity. The shifting of the coast-line makes it a problem, to vzhat
region exactly the statement of o ancient author applies.
4 About Sept. 1, Anspach.
## p. 341 (#379) ############################################
xv]
THE RETURN THROUGH GEDROSIA
341
years and a half since the brilliant figure of the warrior king had issued
from the highlands of Kandahār to enter the confines of the Indian world:
for the last year and a half he had flashed, a more than human wonder,
before the eyes of the peoples of the Punjab and Sind ; now his meteoric
appearance in India was coming to its end, and obscurity falls once more
on Indian history. Alexander started with the land force, except such
troops as were left with the satraps in the Indian provinces, for the river
Hab? . The naval armament remained at Pattala with Nearchus till the
latter part of October, when the monsoon would change. Alexander
again, when he approached the Hab, found the country empty ; the
tribesmen, a people of Dravidian stock, Arava, whom the Greeks called
Arabitae, had deserted their villages in terror. The Europeans crossed the
river (now the frontier of India and Baluchistān) into the country of
the Oritae, who still, being Dravidians, belonged ethnologically to India”.
Here some opposition, ineffectual enough, was made to the passage of the
foreigners. One of the large villages of the Oritae, Rhambacia? , was
occupied and destined for another Greek Alexandria'. Its new population
was compounded largely of people from the Pashtu country (Arachosians).
When Alexander passed on into the country of the Gedrcsians
(crossing from the basin of the Purali, into that of the Phur) he left a
European satrap, Apollophanes, to rule the territory of the Oritae, and one
of his chief captains Leonnatus remained temporarily with a force in
the district to drive home upon the Oritae that they were now the subjects
of a great Empire, and to carry out the scheme of Greek colonisation.
Leonnatus had some stiff fighting - one battle in which the loss on the
native side is said to have been 6000 killed, whilst on the European side the
loss, though numerically insignificant, included the satrap Apollophanes.
Alexander, having crossed into Gedrosia, kept down as near the coast
as possible, in order to dig wells and establish depots for food which might
serve the feet. It was a burning and arid land, rich only in aromatic
shrubs, and the barrier of the Malan range seems to have forced the
European army into a still more appalling region inland. They would have
reached it by way of the Hingol valley, in which the Hinglāj shrine is now
the last great place of Hindu pilgrimage towards the West.
In entering that waterless inferno, from which he emerged, sixty days
after leaving the country of the Oritae, with decimated forces, Alexander
passes
out of the field of Indian history. And yet there is one scene which
1 Tomaschek, Topographische Erläuterung, p. 16.
: Tomaschek connects their name with the Tamil ur 'village,' 'place', Tojo.
graphische Erlanterung, p. 19.
3 Sonmiāni, according to Tomaschek.
4 This is identifying Rhambacia with the Alexandria of Diodorus XVII, 104, 8.
5 Curtius, IX, 10, 7.
>
## p. 342 (#380) ############################################
342
[CH.
ALEXANDER THE GREAT
took place that year in Persia of interest to the Indian historian. The
ascetic from Takshaçilā, whom the Greeks called Kalanos, continued to be
a notable figure amongst the men of war and philosophers surrounding the
king. Suddenly in Persia he announced his resolution to live no longer.
Nothing that Alexander could say availed to move him. Then by the
king's command a pyre was erected for the sage and he was conducted to
it with pomp. He was borne on a litter, garlanded in the Indian way and
chanting in a tongue which the Yavanas could not understand. He was
chanting hymns, some Indians explained, in praise of the gods. In sight of
all the army he ascended the pyre and adopted the due posture. The
pyre had been covered with gold and silver vessels and precious stuffs, and
these the Indian first distributed to his friends. Then, as the torch was
applied, the Yavana trumpets sounded all together, and the army shouted
as they were wout to shout going into battle, and the Indian elephants
uttered their peculiar cry. As the flames mounted and wrapped the figure
of the sage, the onlookers saw it still motionless. This was the way in
which Kalanos chose to take leave of the Yavanas? .
Nearchus, according to Alexander's original plan, was to have taken
station at the eastern mouth of the Indus and set sail at the end of October
(325) when the monsoon changed. But before Alexander left, it may have
appeared that such a station would be exposed to an attack from the mass
of Indian fugitives who had taken refuge in the jungles east of Sind.
Alexander at any rate transferred the fleet to the western mouth, to wait
for the favourable wind. But even here, as soon as Alexander was gone,
revolts broke out, making the position of the Europeans untenable, and
Nearchus was obliged to start, sooner than had been intended, during the
last few days of September? .
The account which Nearchus left of his voyage lay before Strabo and
Arrian, as well as the subsidiary, more anecdotal, account of Onescritus,
who acted as pilot. Through later writers we still possess an abstract of
the book of Nearchus. To fit the names in it to modern sites is, of course,
an interesting geographical puzzle, which will never perhaps be made out
with certainty. The place from which the fleet started, “Wooden Town'
(Xyline Polis) the changes in the coast line bave made indiscoverable. The
haven to which the Greeks came after some days' sail, and which they
named ‘Alexander's Haven,' perhaps corresponded in position with Karāchi.
Here the Greeks waited twenty-five days for the wind to change. They
built a stone wall round their camp on shore to protect it from the Arava
tribesmen, and spent their enforced leisure in fishing up oysters and mussels
from the sea.
At the mouth of the Hab river (Arabis) they again came to
a good harbour (Pliny's statement that Nearchus built a town there
1 Arr. VII, 3 ; Strabo XV, C, 717.
2 Strabo XV, C. 721.
;
## p. 343 (#381) ############################################
Xv]
THE GREEK SATRAPIES
343
is probably a misunderstanding). Beyond the Hab river they coasted
along the country of the Oritae, where Leonnatus either just before or soon
after fought his decisive battle with the tribesmen. Nearchus does not
seem to have detected the mouth of the Purali, where Hephaestion had just
traced the walls of an Alexandria, but at Cocala, probably somewhere near,
fresh stores had been deposited for the fleet by Alexander's order, and
there was an exchange of men between Nearchus and Leonnatus. At the
mouth of the river Tomerus (Hingol) the Greeks found some 600 half-naked
inhabitants ‘living in stuffy huts' who made show of hostility, but were
easily put to flight by the mail-clad Europeans.
Here they remained five
days to repair the ships, and then sailed on past the promontory of Malana
(modern Rās Malan) the limit of the Oritae and of India'.
Alexander had come and gone. Was the European irruption a violent
episode which left India unchanged ? And, if so, was that due to an
essential unchangeableness in India under impact from without ? One may
notice first that nothing was farther from Alexander's own thought than
that his invasion of India was a mere raid. He left the Punjab and Sind
solidly attached, he believed, to his world-empire. Let us glance once more
at the conditions there in the year 324 B. C. The country fell into these
divisions. There was first the satrapy of Philip the son of Machatas. It is
impossible to make out with certainty what its confines were. Philip first
appears (unless he is identical with the commandant of the garrison in
Pushkalāvatī”) as satrap in Takshaçilā', and we gather that there was then
combined under his authority the principality of Āmbhi and what had been
the satrapy of Nicanor in the lower Kābul Valley', as far as the passes over
the Hindu Kush into Bacteria”. He accompanies Alexander's expedition
down the Hydaspes (Jhelum) and is made satrap of a province extending as
far south as the confluence of the Indus and Acesines (Chenāb). We do
not however know whether this new appointment was in addition to, or in
lieu of, his previous satrapy. If the former, his extensive satrapy continued
to embrace the principality of Āmbhi, and we do not know how the double
rule of Macedonian satrap and native prince was adjusted. A second
division was the satrapy of Pithon the son of Agenor, covering Sind from
the Indus confluence to the ocean and extending westward to the Hab. A
third was the large principality of the Paurava prince, extending from the
Hydaspes (Jhelum) to the Hyphasis (Beās). Here there was no division of
authority between prince and satrap, but the Indian acted in both capacities
1 Sir Thomas Holdich's book The Gates of India, reconstructs the voyage of
Nearchus on the old hypothesis that the Arabis is the Purali. The important work of
Tomaschek Sir Thomas does not seem to know.
2 Arr. IV, 28, 6.
3 Arr. V, 8, 3,
4 Arr. IV, 28, 6.
5 Arr. VI, 2, 3 ; Anspach deletes ws et! Bak glov Yns, note 200.
6 Arr. VI, 15, 2.
## p. 344 (#382) ############################################
344
[CH.
ALEXANDER THE GREAT
himself. : A fourth satrapy lay outside India, but within the river system of
the Indus - that of the Paropanisidae (the Hindu Kush) with Alexandria-
under-the-Caucasus for its capital. This was the satrapy held by Oxyartes,
Alexander's father-in-law. There was finally a fifth district in somewhat
looser connexion with the Empire, Abhisāra in Kashmir, whose ruler, as we
' have seen, had been enabled by Macedonian influence to establish his
authority over the smaller rājas in his neighbourhood.
The European rule was supported by an army of occupation. Its
numbers are not told us, but it included Macedonians and Greek mercen-
aries. Besides these Philip had at his disposal a considerable body of
Thracians. The commander of this corps was a Macedonian destined to
play a conspicuous part in the near future, Eudamus the son of Crateuas,
a native of the region south of the Ostrovo Lake, and brother of one of the
Seven who constituted the king's special body-guarda.
The army of occupation was, no doubt, in large part distributed
through the new cities, which were intended in Alexander's design, not only
to give the European root in the country, but to quicken India through
Greek intelligence and enterprise to new developments of commercial
activity and material splendour. There these little bodies of Europeans
remained, when Alexander was gone, enclosed within their fresh-built walls,
subject, it would seem, to Macedonian satraps but not to the native
princes', urged by the king's command to build docks and quays and
reproduce the life of Greek cities upon the rivers of India.
We know, of course, that Alexander's dream came to nothing. The
European in India faded away. But it is a mistake when we judge the
dream by its actual result. For the experiment was never really tried ; it
was frustrated at its inception by an event which no one could have
foreseen, - Alexander's premature death, without an adequate heir, less than
two years after he quitted India. The realisation of the dream all depended
upon the Empire's holding together for a century or two. Flad Alexander
lived to a normal age, there is no reason why it should not have done so.
As it was, the rapidly constructed fabric, its cement still soft, fell quickly
to pieces. If a military occupation of eight years or so left no permanent
trace upon the north-west of India, we can hardly infer from that the
essential unreceptiveness of India for Hellenism. Had the occupation been
prolonged for a series of generations, the result might have been very
different. The idea, ineradicable from modern journalism, that 'the East'
(whatever that vague term may denote) is by its nature impervious to the
1 Plut. Alex. 60.
2 Arr. VI, 15, 2; 28, 4; Curt. X, 1, 21 ; Diod. XIX, 14,1.
3 In colonias in Indis conditas Pithon Agenoris filius mittitur,' Justin XIII, 4,
21, quoted by Niese (p. 504).
## p. 345 (#383) ############################################
xv]
CONSEQUENCE OF THE INVASION
345
>
rationalistic culture of ancient Greece and modern Europe is not supported
by the facts, either by what happened in ancient Syria, or what happened
in the Muhammadan kingdoms of the Middle Ages, or by what is happen-
ing to-day in India, China and Japan. When the rest of the East, after the
passage of phalanx and legion, 'plunged in thought again,' it was thought
profoundly modified by the Greek schoolmaster who followed in the
soldier's train. In India Hellenic rationalism? would have come into
contact with more elaborate homegrown systems of imaginative thought
or intuition than the nearer East afforded. What would have happened we
cannot say ; but that the contact would have left either unaffected is
highly improbable.
The European invasion of India was an event of too great magnitude
not to have far-reaching consequences. As other overflowings of foreign
conquests have done, it swept away internal barriers which prevented the
unification of the lands concerned. The confederacies of free tribes, which
had maintained tleir proud isolation from other political systems, were left
utterly broken. Smaller principalities were swallowed up in a realm such
as that given by Alexander to the Paurava. This, no doubt, made it a
simpler matter for the Maurya king a few years later to take these count-
ries into his great Indian empire.
The contact of India with the Greek world did not cease with the
disruption of Alexander's empire. What can be traced of later political
connexions between Indian and Hellenistic kings will be exhibited in
another chapter. Any influences which can ultimately be shown to have
reached India from the Greek West, whether through the medium of
Seleucid or Bacterian kings or of the Roman Empire, which took up the
inheritance of Hellenism in Asia, may be regarded as consequences of the
work of Alexander. If they were not consequences of the work which
Alexander did in India, they were, in any case, consequences of the work
which he did when he established Hellenism in Irān, Syria, Asia Minor, and
Egypt. India indeed and the Greek world only touched each other on
their fringes, and there was never a chance for elements of the Hellenistic
tradition to strike root in India, as a part of Hellenism struck root in the
Nearer East and was still vital in the Muhammadan, largely Hellenistic,
culture of the Middle Ages. There are, however, the two unquestionable
cases of transmission, which will be noted in subsequent chapters -
the artistic types conveyed by the school of Gandhāra, and the Greek
astronomy which superseded the primitive native system in the latter part
of the fourth century A. D.
When Alexander died, it was plain that the imperial system in India
was as yet anything but secure. It was not only a case of the people of the
1 A chance light is thrown on Alexander's intentions 'Ichthyophagos vetuit
piscibus vivere,' Plin. N, H. VI. § 95 ; cf. Curt. VIII, 8, 12.
.
## p. 346 (#384) ############################################
346
[CH.
ANCIENT GREEK COINS IN INDIA
land proving restive; the Europeans themselves did not form a harmonious
community. Although thousands of Greeks had fought, as mercenaries or
allies, side by side with the Macedonians in the conquest of Asia and to
the Asiatics, no doubt, appeared indistinguishably as Yavanas, neither
kindred people loved the other. It was specially Greek veterans whom
Alexander had settled in his new eastern cities. In Bacteria and Sogdiāna
we know that they had been settled very much against their will and tried
at the first opportunity to make their way home. Their settlement in the
remote colonies was sometimes a punishment for disaffection”. We may
conclude that the Greeks who had been planted in the Punjab did not find
their surroundings congenial. Within a few months apparently of
Alexander's departure, the Greek mercenaries under Philip rose in mutiny.
Philip received a mortal wound. Instantly his Macedonian guards avenged
his death upon the Greeks. Then orders came from Alexander that till a
satrap was appointed to succeed Philip, the province should be administered
by the rāja of Takshaçilā and Eudamus, the commander of the Thracians.
This provisional arrangement was apparently still in force when the news
reached India in the summer of 323 B. c. that the great king was dead.
Suddenly in Babylon his designs for conquest and organisation had come
to an end.
ATHENIAN AND MACEDONIAN COINS IN INDIA
It is difficult to say how far the currency of India was immediately
affected by Alexander's conquest. In the end, of course, it must have
been profoundly modified by the disappearance of the Persian sigloi,
the issue of which did not long survive the overthrow of Darius III, as
well as by the stimulus which native art undoubtedly received as a result
of the Greek invasion. But the change did not come all at once, and the
task of determining the exact course that events followed is rendered
virtually impossible by the lack of trustworthy evidence. It is, indeed,
often stated that India was one of the many quarters of the ancient
world into which the silver tetradrachms of Athens made their way, and
also that imitations of Athenian coins are found from time to time in
the Punjab. If these statements could be confirmed, they would furnish at
least one definite clue. A demand for local copies would only arise
when the supply of originals ran short, and such a shortage could most
readily be accounted for by connecting it with the paralysis that overtook
the Athenian mint when the city was finally crushed beneath the heel
of Macedon. Indian imitations might, therefore, be assigned with
reasonable confidence to the period of Macedonian supremacy.
1 Arr. V, 27, 5.
2 Justin XII, 5, 8, and 13.
As a
## p. 347 (#385) ############################################
xv]
ATHENIAN AND MACEDONIAN TYPES
347
matter of fact, however, enquiry has failed to bring to light any trustworthy
records of the actual discovery of ‘owls' in India, while the imitations
acquired by the British Museum at Rāwalpindi appear to have been
brought without exception from the northern side of the frontier and
thus to be of Central Asian, rather than of Indian, ori gin. Precisely
the same difficulty besets any attempt to establish an intimate connexion
between India itself and those coins of a Macedonian character which
are usually described as being of Indian provenance ; in all definitely
ascertained cases the ‘find-spot' lies beyond the Hindu Kush. Nevertheless,
as fresh testimony may at any moment emerge, it seems desirable to
enumerate briefly the more important of the issues concerned.
The imitations of Athenian tetradrachms fall into two distinct
groups. The first of these (Pl. I, 7) appromixates fairly closely to the
original model. One variety, however, -represented both in the Bodleian
and in the British Museum (Pl. I, 8) - reads, not A TE, but AIT, which
Head interprets as perhaps referring to the Aigloi, whom Herodotus (111,92)
mentions as dwelling to the north of the Bactrians. The second group
(Pl. I, 9, 10) is characterised by a softer style, by the presence of the
monogram 1, and by the use of a bunch of grapes as a symbol. The
Y'
a
difference between the two is emphasised by the fact that, whereas the
dies from which coins belonging to the first are struck have lain at all
conceivable angles relatively to one another, the types of the coins belong-
ing to the second are adjusted (^ D with a nicety which points to the
employment of a hinge or of some equally effective mechanical contrivance.
Further while the first group appears to consist solely of tetradrachms, the
second includes also didrachms and drachms (P1, 1, 11, 12). These
smaller denominations are remarkable in that they are not minted, like
the tetradrachms, on the Attic standard, which has a maximum weight of
67·5 grains (4:37 grammes) to the drachm, but on a standard in which
the drachm seems to have weighed at the outside no more than 58 grains
(3. 75 grammes). In this and other respects they link themselves naturally
to a set of drachms and diobols which are struck from regularly adjusted
dies ( 1 ), but in which the place of the Athenian owl is taken by
an eagle, looking backwards (Pl. I, 13). On the drachms and diobols just
referred to, the bunch of grapes still figures as a symbol. In one instance
it is accompanied by a caduceus.
Some ground for thinking that at least the smaller Athenian
imitations were not unfamiliar in the north of India is furnished by
a notable series of silver drachms of Attic weight (Pl. I, 17), for the actual
finding of which in the Punjab General Cunningham is able to vouch.
They are struck from regularly adjusted dies ( Î V), and these dies have
been cut by a Greek artist who signs himself M or MN. The obverse
## p. 348 (#386) ############################################
318
[ch.
ANCIENT GREEK COINS IN INDIA
shows the head of a warrior wearing a close-fitting helmet, wreathed
with olive, while the reverse has a cock standing to right with a caduceus
behind. The legend is ERØYTOY. Apart from the circumstance that
a unique trihemiobol in the Berlin Museum has the head, of Athena, instead
of that of a warrior, the coins leave a general impression of having been
designed after an Athenian prototype. This and the absence of a royal
title go to indicate a date not long subsequent to Alexander's expedition, a
conclusion which in its turn fits in well with the current interpretation
of the inscription. Sophytes (Saubhūti) has been by universal consent
identified with the Sopeithes of Arrian (v1, 2, 2) and Strabo (xv, 699). If
this view is right, his coins may be regarded as a very direct memorial of
Greek influence in India.
A few coins with the name of Alexander himself have also been
classed as Indian. Thus a bronze piece, not distinguishable from his
ordinary issue except that it is of squarish shape, has for many years been
tacitly accepted as proof that the conqueror issued money of his own in
India, conforming so far to local custom as to adopt the native fashion of
striking the coins on blanks cut from oblong strips or bars. But the piece,
which is now in Berlin, stands absolutely alone. Beyond the shape, there
is not a particle of evidence to suggest association with the East. And
closer scrutiny points to the shape being no more than an accidental freak,
the result of awkward handling by some workman at a Western mint.
A group of silver tetradrachms deserves more serious consideration. They
have on the obverse a head of Zeus, and on the reverse an eagle on a
thunderbolt, accompanied by the legend AEINAPOY (Pl. I, 14). The
types are Macedonian, and the coins were long believed to be European
and to represent Alexander's earliest mintage. There can, however, be
little doubt that Head is right in claiming them for the East. The significance
of the symbol in the field, which he was the first to recognise as a satrapal
tiara, is unmistakable. Again, the only specimen whose history is known,
came from Rāwalpindi, while a diobol of similar types is said to have been
in the hands of a dealer in Tashkand in 1906. Finally, although the die-
positions are irregular, there are points of contact with the second group
of Athenian imitations described above. To say nothing of the eagle with
reverted head, certain subsidiary symbols - an olive-spray with leaves, and
--
berry, and a vine-branch with grapes - are
to both ; and both
are apparently struck on the same abnormal standard, the average weight
of three of the Macedonian tetradrachms being 2175 grains (14. 09
grammes). But, if the coins in question are Eastern, it does not follow
1 This is the emphatic opinion of Prof. Regling, who has been good enough to
examine the original carefully. His view is fully borne out by a cast which he has
kindly supplie l.
common
## p. 349 (#387) ############################################
Xv]
DOUBLE DARICS
349
>
that they are Indian. On the contrary, the evidence of provenance, slight
though it be, is all in favour of Central Asia. And so, too, is that of the
peculiar weight standard. When this standard next emerges in that quarter
of the world, it is among coins struck by Antiochus I during his viceroyalty
or in other words, after Seleucus Nicator had formally renounced his
pretensions to the Punjab as part of his bargain with Chandragupta.
inference is that the district whose needs tetradrachms of the sort were
meant to meet, lay beyond the confines of India.
None of the pieces we have been discussing bear the King's title.
Both title and name (Bu. G! os Alseavdo pv) have, however, been read
into the monogram Æ, which occurs on an extraordinary silver decadrachm
of Attic weight now in the British Museum (Pl. I, 16). The obverse type
is a horseman, with lance at rest, charging down upon a retreating
elephant, on the back of which are two men turning round to face their
pursuer. On the reverse, beside the monogram, is a tall figure, wearing
cloak and cap, and having a sword by his side, standing to left holding a
thunderbolt and a spear. In spite of certain features which are not alto-
gether satisfactory, the genuineness of the coin has been unhesitatingly
accepted by Head and Gardner, and from such experienced judges it would
be very rash to differ. Gardner, who was the first to publish it (N. C. ,
1887, p. 177), was disposed to give it to Bactria and to connect it with 'some
notable victory won by a Greek King of Bactria over the invading hordes
of Yueh-chi in the second century B. C. ' Head, on the other hand, comes
to the conclusion, ‘after a careful study of the fabric. . . that it belongs to
Alexander's own time, and that it records the historical event of his
invasion of the Punjab in 326 B. C. ' He sees in the standing figure a
representation of Alexander as Zeus, while he puts forward the interesting
suggestion that the lance is being wielded, not by the horseman, but by
the rearmost of the two elephant-riders, and that consequently the scene
depicted is the retreat of Porus and his pursuit by Taxiles, exactly as
recorded by Arrian (v, 18). The coin, he thinks, may have been struck by
Taxiles himself at his capital city Takshaçilā. Unfortunately this hypothesis
is not supported by the 'find-spot' of the decadrachm. It was discovered
at Khullum in Bukhāra.
A similar inconclusive result awaits any endeavour to sift the asser-
tions so frequently advanced as to the circulation, and even the striking,
of double darics in India. These fine gold coins (Pl. I, 6) are, in the strict
sense, Persian. But it is hardly likely that any of them were minted until
after the defeat of the last of the Achaemenids by Alexander. It is certain
that the great majority bear Greek monograms or letters, and that they
were issued at Babylon, and possibly elsewhere, by the satraps of the
## p. 350 (#388) ############################################
350
[сн
ANCIENT GREEK COINS IN INDIA
Macedonian conqueror. That they were popular in the East is beyond
question. Whether they made their way into India is another matter.
The statement that they were struck there has nothing whatever to confirm
it. Nearly all of the specimens in the British Museum were acquired at
Rāwalpindi, but the real source seems to have been the rich find or series
of finds made about 1877 and 1878 in Bukhāra, ‘eight marches beyond the
Oxus, at an old fort on the tongue of land formed by two joining rivers. '
The precise locality appears to have been Kabadian, a town on the
Kapinahan, in the Sogdiāna.
## p. 351 (#389) ############################################
CHAPTER XVI
INDIA IN EARLY GREEK AND LATIN LITERATURE
In this chapter we shift our point of view. We no longer try to trans-
fer ourselves to ancient India and see for ourselves what is going on there :
we ask instead what impression this magnitude, India, made upon another
people, the Hellenes on the shores of the Mediterranean, the progenitors
of our modern European rationalistic civilisation.
