Soldier, Priest, and God

by F S Naiden

  How did Alexander respond to this opportunity? The historical record is blank. None of the companions seems to have written about this subject, and neither did any later writers. After embracing the religion of the Egyptians and accepting the instructions of the Babylonians, Alexander apparently did nothing to respond to the Indians. At Mount Meru he had found a Greek way to rule India, and it seems he never looked for another. Perhaps he disliked the soma. He cannot have admired the temples. Rough-hewn stone affairs, they clung to the ground and often culminated in a stupa containing relics of a holy man. For the Indians, a stupa was a miniature version of Mount Meru. For the Greeks and Macedonians, these buildings suited the worship of a hero, not a god.15

  When Alexander offered gifts to Indian priests, he was vexed to see the gifts rejected. (He was unaware that, as a foreigner, he did not belong to the caste entitled to give them gifts.) The prestige of the Buddha and the tirthankara surprised the Macedonians. They knew little about religious reformers. Only the king, being the chief priest, could alter the religion of the Macedonians.16

  Although Alexander collected gifts and tribute in Taxila, he disbursed far more in spoils. To Ambhi he promised 1,000 talents of future booty, prompting one Macedonian to congratulate Alexander for finding a foreigner who deserved so great a reward. Ordinary soldiers did not begrudge Alexander this gesture. Besides getting their pay, they got sacrificial largesse. Alexander gave the wounded lodgings in Taxila, where they would eventually serve as a garrison. These men would not need to wonder how far into India Alexander would go.17

  another indian king, Puru, waited beyond the Jhelum. This torrent of a river swept downward in a muddy spate over a rugged bed of boulders, shooting forth green waves and swirling into eddies and backwaters beside crumbling banks. When Alexander arrived, in flood season, the river was unfordable. Confident in this natural barrier, and also in his archers, Puru refused to submit to the Macedonians. Even if the Macedonians somehow crossed, Puru would meet them with elephants. The men and horses would never get out of the water and up the bank.

  Alexander convened the council and made a plan to divide the army in three parts. Craterus would take charge of heavy infantry and cavalry stationed in a riverside camp. Other commanders would take charge of the mercenaries and disperse them elsewhere along the river. These two parts would immobilize the Indians and make it possible for the third part, under Alexander, to find and attack the enemy’s corps of elephants. Alexander’s experience with elephants, limited though it was, had led him to target this element in Puru’s army. If he could destroy it, or even neutralize it, his Macedonians would defeat the rest. As for Puru, he would either die with his elephants, supplicate, or retreat. All three outcomes would serve Alexander’s wish—as strong now as ever—to maintain his own prestige through victories in battle. He assumed that Ambhi would betray him if he failed to defeat Puru.18

  Puru wished to meet Alexander in battle and survive, or at least see to it that his army survived, and demonstrate to India’s soldiers that the outlandish invader was not invincible. He patrolled his side of the river looking for Alexander, and ignored Craterus and the mercenaries.

  To deceive his foe, Alexander spread word that he would wait some months for the water to go down. Then he made mock attempts to cross. That exasperated the Indians, who eventually reduced their patrols. Next he moved his men to a bend where the river was only several hundred yards wide. The weather was right: a torrential rain at midnight. The engineers had already hidden boat parts in nearby woods and now assembled them. Ambhi’s officers showed the Macedonians how to use inflatable sheepskins. These were more buoyant than the Macedonian floats full of straw, and less soggy in the rain.19

  Five thousand cavalrymen crossed on the floats, the horses swam, and some 6,000 infantry crossed in reassembled boats, or two apiece on the inflated skins. The storm made them inaudible and invisible. When the men and horses got across, they saw their mistake: they had reached an island. They would have to make another crossing. At last they managed to reach the other bank. To their relief, Puru and his elephants were nowhere in sight. Alexander’s charades had distracted him.20

  Once across, Alexander did not delay. He lined up his force of 11,000, cavalry in the van, and made for Puru’s position, several miles away. When 120 enemy chariots appeared, the Macedonians dealt with the attackers the same way as at Arbela: they let the enemy pass through, and then struck them from the side and rear. The chariots got stuck in the mud or were overturned. Alexander pressed on. Soon he and the cavalry caught sight of Puru’s army, centered on a force of elephants that made the enemy position look like a castle.21

  Open country lay all around. Alexander could dispatch his ample cavalry to either his left or his right, and Puru, who had fewer cavalry, could not stop them. In the center, Alexander’s phalanx, which had not yet reached the battlefield, would face Puru’s infantry and elephants. Although Alexander had the advantages of speed and maneuverability, Puru, riding atop the neck of an elephant in the middle of the line, could see more of the field. He had also brought a bigger proportion of his men to the battle. Most of Alexander’s men were still across the river.

  Alexander and the cavalry resumed their advance and drew somewhat closer to the elephants, but did not attack them. The horses would have taken fright. Instead Alexander swerved right, around the Indian flank. The rest of the cavalry broke left, under Coenus.22

  Puru saw that Alexander was trying to encircle him, and he ordered his own cavalry to thwart the Macedonians by riding parallel to them. In response, Alexander rode farther to the right. Meanwhile, Coenus and the rest of the Macedonian cavalry rode around the other end of Puru’s line and began attacking the Indians from the rear. Puru ordered some of his cavalry to face about and resist Coenus. The Macedonians had met their match in formation-fighting.23

  Then Alexander attacked, and Puru responded by sending some of his elephants against the Macedonian cavalry. That blunted Alexander’s assault, but exposed the elephants to attack by the Macedonian phalanx. So far they had held back, for fear of the animals’ trunks and tusks. Now they struck the animals from the side and gradually drove them into a mass. The elephants inadvertently trampled Indian foot soldiers and caused some Indian cavalry to be trapped between the two sides. The mahouts tried to redeploy their animals, but the Balkan javelin men targeted them, and one elephant after another lost its guide. The Macedonians struck down hundreds of Indians, penetrating the damaged formation. Craterus and the other troops on the far side of the river crossed over and joined the attack. Puru eventually found himself surrounded, but refused to surrender, and the Macedonians, tired and overawed, did not attempt to take him captive. Their own casualties numbered at least 1,000, the largest for any pitched battle.24

  As soon as Alexander heard that Puru was surrounded, he rode to the scene, spotted him, and sent Ambhi as a messenger. Regarding Ambhi as a traitor, Puru raised his javelin in order to kill him. Ambhi withdrew, and Alexander sent another Indian messenger, known to the Greeks as Sandracottus. A political exile, Sandracottus had presented Alexander a plan for invading India. He might have the skills and connections to reach Puru.25

  After speaking to Puru, Sandracottus reported the Indian king was wounded but still atop his elephant. It would not do to have him meet Alexander that way, since the Macedonian rode only a horse, so Sandracottus returned to Puru and asked him to dismount. The Indian king balked, but then Alexander rode up with only a few companions, and dismounted himself. Puru did the same. The two commanders, one wounded and one unharmed, stood face-to-face. Sandracottus and some of Puru’s men acted as translators, but the Macedonians did not quite understand whom they were dealing with. The man they called “Porus” did not have this personal name. Puru was a dynastic name. Had Alexander borne such a name, it would have been Temenid, the Macedonian royal family name. The dynasty of the Puru or Paurava had once lived by the Sarasvati River, and then moved to western Punjab.26

&nbs
p; The companions strove to overhear the ensuing conversation. Alexander asked what he should do for Puru, and Puru answered, “Treat me like a king,” or, as one companion heard it, “Treat me as this day shows you should.” Puru would not supplicate, and so Alexander would have to establish some other tie with him.27

  Alexander responded complaisantly. Besides allowing Puru to continue ruling his kingdom, Alexander promised to give him additional territory. That was more than Ambhi got. Alexander also made Puru satrap, the same as Ambhi. And one more thing: Alexander would make Puru a companion. Neither Ambhi nor Mazdai got that. Alexander had changed his method of dealing with the defeated. Rather than turn Indian rulers into subjects, Alexander planned to convert them, king by stubborn king, to the Macedonian royal cult. Every defeated enemy could be an ally gained—a firm ally, bound to Alexander by the Zeus of companions.28

  In the past, Alexander had participated in the cults of foreign nations, especially Egypt. Now he expected the ruler of a foreign nation to participate in a Macedonian cult. As in Persia, Alexander’s religious policy toward foreigners was coming into conflict with his role as leader of the cult of the companions.

  Puru accepted Alexander’s offer and agreed to become an ally. He did not put his army at Alexander’s disposal, and Alexander did not ask him to. Instead Puru and a smaller force would march with the Macedonians.

  After the two kings finished their impromptu negotiations, the two sides withdrew to separate camps. Alexander buried the dead and then celebrated the victory and the new alliance with offerings and games. Mindful of rainy weather, he worshipped the sun and prayed for a dry way eastward.29

  Silver tetradrachm minted in Babylon, 323–322 BC.

  American Numismatic Society 1959.284.86.

  The officers did not like the prospect of going east. Several Indian rulers had bigger armies than Puru, especially the Magadha rulers on the Ganges. These foes could deploy enough elephants to trample the Macedonians. The companions also objected to Puru being one of their number. As a king, Puru was too powerful to be a companion.

  Alexander might have reasoned with them: When he was only king of Macedon, he needed companions who were commoners, but now, as son of Zeus, or king of the world, he needed companions who were kings. Instead, Alexander gave the companions games and sacrificial meals. He could not give them bonuses. India was not yielding up treasures as had Persepolis and Susa. The Indians minted some coins, but they were punched and not struck.

  The most impressive images of the conquest of India came from faraway Babylon. Alexander ordered the Babylonian mint to commemorate the battle with medallions featuring an elephant and coins featuring Alexander on Bucephalas, armed with a long spear and attacking an elephant with two mahouts.30

  Some of these medallions showed a mounted Alexander attacking an elephant not just with a spear in one hand but with a thunderbolt in the other. The thunderbolt was Zeus’s weapon of choice. By carrying it, Alexander became godlike. Yet he was not threatening a god, a titan, or some human sinner, as Zeus would. He was fighting a battle, and he might even seem to be hunting the elephant. The religious purpose of the medallion, which was to associate Alexander with Zeus or Zeus-Amon, was at odds with the commemorative purpose, which was to portray one king’s victory over another.31

  after the celebration, the army campaigned farther east. As the rain increased, it drove the main body of the army from the roads and valleys toward higher ground. When the army reached the next tributary of the Indus, the Chenab, in late June, the water had risen some fifty feet, leaving its bed and inundating the plains. Even after Alexander went as far as dry land would take him, he faced a stream of 3,000 rocky yards. Out came the stuffed skins and the reassembled boats. The skins still worked. Some boats broke up on the rocks, causing hundreds if not thousands to drown.32

  The sight of some lotuses led Alexander to believe that he had discovered the source of the Nile. He had seen these plants in Egypt, where they had been a tourist favorite since Herodotus. Perhaps he could sail down the river and end up in the Nile valley. But no, the local informants told Alexander, the Chenab ran down to the Gulf of Arabia, not to Africa. Forget the Nile, and head for the hills: it was flood season. Sleeping on roofs helped, but not for long. Snakes fleeing the rising waters infested the trees and the roofs, too. Alexander and his men fled northward, following the locals. Eventually, he reasoned, the waters would recede, and then he would need more boats. Once in the hills, he had his foresters cut teakwood.33

  Still fleeing the rain, the army traveled up toward the Himalayas. They had left any enemies far below, but did not know it. Potential informants shunned them, and the remaining population were specimens of a new kind. One companion wrote:

  In the forest were fabulously big monkeys with tails, and a fabulous number of them. The Macedonians once saw them standing on some open hilltops, staring. The monkeys have a human attitude, no less than elephants do, and so the Macedonians fancied that this was an army, and they attacked them as though they were enemies. The Indians there with Alexander had to tell the Macedonians to stop.

  Other writers said that the apes (or monkeys, as the Greek writers called them) replied by throwing stones.34

  In August Alexander reached the next river, the Ravi. The floodwater had receded, clearing the way to the city of Sangala, three days farther east. To induce a surrender, Alexander assaulted a nearby town, sparing no one, and then burned it to the ground. Then he advanced on Sangala, which begged for mercy. He granted it. At the end of the campaign the Macedonians buried their own dead, who totaled about ninety, with pomp and circumstance.35

  Leaving Sangala in the hands of some of Puru’s troops, the army headed toward the river Beas. By this point they had crossed most of Punjab. In a few days more they would reach the edge of the Indus watershed. Beyond lay some 120 miles of low, open land between the Indus watershed and that of the Ganges. This country, which now straddles the border between Pakistan and the Republic of India, became the site of the British imperial capital, New Delhi.

  Alexander knew little about the Ganges. After his experience at the Chenab, he could believe the reports that the Ganges was more than three miles wide, and that it was a very considerable god. Sandracottus and others gave him conflicting reports about the Ganges kingdom of Magadha, with its capital in the riverside stockade of Palibothra. Sandracottus minimized the difficulty of attacking Magadha, but other informants did not. Alexander’s generals remained pessimistic.36

  The army reached the Beas amidst ceaseless rain. Up and down the broad stream massive boulders confronted them. On the far side barren country stretched as far as the Ganges, twelve days distant. Alexander, leading the van, ordered preparations for a crossing, and in a few days Hephaestion and the rest of the troops caught up with him, after campaigning elsewhere in Punjab. As the army hewed rafts and stuffed skins, the rain poured and knots of soldiers gathered to complain. The Macedonian infantry and cavalry wanted to go home, and they told their officers as much.37

  Complaints of this kind had begun as soon as the army left Ecbatana, four years before. At that time the officers either shouted down the malcontents or relayed promises from Alexander. The men received sacrificial meat plus money and a place to spend it, and got more food when Alexander let them go foraging. They took captives, and sometimes they were supplicated. In India, they got little or none of this.38

  Rather than reprove the men, the officers sympathized with them. Since Taxila, the officers had gotten no appointments, and they were hearing more and more rumors about Ganges armies and elephants. Suppose they won a new war in the Ganges valley and reached the edge of India. Was that the end of the world? What would they accomplish there? A thanksgiving enabling them to return? Why not turn back now?

  Coenus, Perdiccas, and other veteran officers were aging, and soldiers without mounts were aging faster as they slogged through the Punjab. If Alexander wished to make more conquests, he ought to produce a favorable omen.
Instead, Zeus had sent seventy consecutive days of rain.39

  What would the officers do? They could not appeal to faraway Antipater or Antigonus. They did not trust Puru or Ambhi, who were using the Macedonian army to advance their own interests. Without a summons from Alexander, they could not even meet.

  Then Alexander made the worst mistake of the expedition. He called a council of war.

  after hearing from hephaestion, Ptolemy, and Leonnatus about the new attitude among the officers, Alexander convened a meeting of all the commanders of phalanx regiments, plus other leaders. The bodyguards attended, too, making about twenty in all. Perdiccas and several of those present had commanded infantry regiments throughout the expedition. Craterus being absent, the most senior officer was Coenus, who had commanded not only an infantry regiment but also half the companion cavalry. All told, Coenus had led more independent commands than anyone but Craterus.40

  In Ptolemy’s account of the meeting, Alexander began by saying, “When you follow me into danger you are not of the same mind as before. I see it, and that’s why I have summoned you. Persuade me to go back, or let me persuade you to go on.” This gambit acknowledged the perspective of his listeners: he was Jason, and they were the Argonauts.41

  Alexander claimed that the enemies awaiting them in the Ganges Valley would flee, and that the mouth of the Ganges, the most remote part of Asia, lay close by. If they did not go the distance, unconquered nations would attack them and deprive them of what they already ruled. After they did go the distance, they might go home via an interesting new route, sailing around Africa. Perhaps Alexander had heard that the Phoenicians circumnavigated Africa. Now his companions would.