by John Keay
As one might expect in a republic, the beautiful Amrapali (or Ambarapali) was not a princess. In fact she was a courtesan whose physical perfection and outstanding skills had secured her elevation to the status of a national asset. In other republics an elaborate beauty contest was held to select the principal courtesan, and this may also have been the case in Vaisali. But Amrapali, as befitted one of the Buddha’s most devoted future followers, was shrewd as well as comely. Though her favours were supposedly reserved exclusively for those 7707 (or ‘twice 84,000’) Licchavi ‘knights-raja’, she also wielded great political influence and became, in effect, Vaisali’s ‘first lady’. It was therefore a crushing blow to Licchavi self-esteem when it was discovered that, in the midst of desultory fighting with Magadha, the Magadhan king had entered Vaisali in disguise and, undetected, had there enjoyed a week’s dalliance in Amrapali’s delectable company. Bimbisara had to be made to pay for his indiscretion, and the Licchavis had duly multiplied their attacks on Magadhan territory.
Admittedly the detail of this story survives only in a later Tibetan source. Better known, it would surely have inspired poignant verse and operatic libretti. But from other Buddhist texts it is clear that Bimbisara did indeed incur the wrath of the Licchavis and that ‘something really harmful and injurious’6 provoked his son Ajatashatru to seek revenge. The subsequent war seems to have lasted on and off for at least twelve years. Initially it was compounded by a succession struggle between Ajatashatru and one of his brothers. The brother, who was domiciled in Anga (presumably as its governor), refused to surrender a priceless necklace. He also withheld an even more priceless elephant which had been trained to act as a shower-hose, sprinkling the ladies of the Magadhan household with a deliciously scented spray when they were bathing. No doubt both necklace and elephant were seen as in the nature of regalia. Ajatashatru’s acquisition of them was therefore essential to the legitimacy of his rule. But his brother remained defiant and, fearing attack, eventually fled to Vaisali where he secured the support of the hated Licchavis.
Another account makes the item of dispute a mountain from which oozed a highly prized, because highly scented, unguent; yet another seems to indicate a disputed island in, or port on, the Ganga, which formed the Magadha-Licchavi frontier. We know of such details because Ajatashatru saw fit to consult the Buddha about the impending hostilities and because later Buddhist commentators therefore saw fit to record them, albeit variously. Buddhist sculptors followed suit. In a relief panel from the second-century BC stupa at Bharhut (now in the Calcutta Museum) a demure and most unwarlike Ajatashatru is depicted arriving on elephant-back with a retinue of wives and then making obeisance before the throne of the Buddha. Well preserved in the hard russet sandstone of Bharhut, this eloquent scene may rate as the earliest depiction in Indian art of a genuine historical figure. Buddhist texts also mention that on his last journey north the Buddha, after his meeting with the king but before crossing the Ganga, passed a building site where a new Magadhan fort was being erected. The place was called Pataligrama. To it the Magadhan court would remove under Ajatashatru’s successor and, greatly extended and beautified, the city by the Ganga at what is now Patna would become, as Pataliputra, the metropolis of the Magadhan empire under the Mauryas.
In its infancy the fort at Pataligrama failed to overawe the Licchavis. Initially the war seems to have gone badly for Ajatashatru, who may even have been forced to seek terms. Further hostilities, as recorded in Jain sources, produced two epic battles with echoes of the great Bharata war, except that Ajatashatru eventually won both thanks to some precocious mechanisation. A new catapult capable of firing massive rocks was developed, and then a heavily armoured robot equipped with club-wielding arms and powered by some invisible means of propulsion – ‘It has been compared to the tanks used in the two great world wars.’7 Before this veritable blitzkrieg the Licchavis withdrew to their capital and prepared for a siege. Evidently even the tank made no impression on Vaisali’s fortifications. The siege dragged on, and Ajatashatru was obliged to try psychological warfare. Insinuating into the Licchavi counsels a particularly wily brahman, or suborning the city’s tutelary ascetic with an irresistible prostitute, he either reduced his enemies to discord or duped them into surrender. Magadhan forces occupied Vaisali unopposed, the Licchavi republic was finally reduced, and the 7707 rajas were dispersed, although not eliminated. When the Second Buddhist Council was convened in Vaisali some time in the latter half of the fourth century BC the city was under Magadhan control.
Thus, in the space of two reigns which conveniently straddled the long life of the Buddha, Magadha had emerged from comparative inconsequence to dominate the lower Ganga with a territorial reach that extended from the Bay of Bengal to the Nepal Himalayas. Further up the Ganga, the kingdom of Vatsya, possibly the successor state to that of the Kuru of Hastinapura, still flourished with its capital at Kaushambi (near Allahabad). So did the kingdom of Avanti, based on Ujjain (near Indore) far to the south on the banks of the Narmada river. Kaushambi and Ujjain were engaged in their own power struggle. Into it Magadha seems occasionally to have been drawn, and from it Ajatashatru’s successors were able to profit, although it is unclear when Magadhan supremacy was recognised in these distant regions.
In fact the grave uncertainty which surrounds the history of Magadha immediately after Ajatashatru extends even to the succession. Between Ajatashatru’s death some time between C380 BC and C330 BC (according to the ‘short chronology’) and the accession of Chandragupta Maurya in C320 BC the sources speak mainly of court intrigues and murders. Evidently the throne changed hands frequently, perhaps with more than one incumbent claiming to occupy it at the same time. Eventually it was secured by Mahapadma Nanda, the son of a barber and therefore not only a usurper but also a low-caste sudra. According to the orthodox Puranas, he invoked his caste status to conduct a vendetta against all ksatriyas. Since most existing kings were, or claimed to be, ksatriyas, this represented a declaration of war on the entire political order. Remarkable conquests resulted. By 326 BC the Nanda family was ruling over a greatly extended kingdom which included the whole of the Ganga valley plus Orissa and parts of central India.
Mahapadma Nanda himself may have been responsible for these conquests. He is the first to be described as a ‘one-umbrella sovereign’, a concept closely related to the Buddhist idea of a pan-Indian cakravartin or ‘world ruler’ and implying the association of all existing polities under a single sovereign. Patriotic Indian historians tend to pounce on this early evidence of national integration and to hail Mahapadma Nanda as ‘the first great historical emperor of Northern India’. The wealth of the Nandas also became legendary, and was supposedly buried in a cave in the bed of the Ganga. Their exactions and unpopularity were remembered too, although this may have been the result of failing to placate either brahmanical or Buddhist opinion with the munificence expected of royal patrons.
The Nanda family undeniably commanded the most formidable standing army yet seen in India. Military statistics readily lend themselves to exaggeration, especially when provided by a disappointed adversary. Yet the Nandas’ army of 200,000 infantry, twenty thousand cavalry, two thousand four-horse chariots and three to six thousand war-elephants would have represented a formidable force even if decimated by roll-call reality. It was certainly enough to strike alarm in stout Greek hearts, to awaken in them fond memories of Thracian wine and olive-rich homesteads beside the northern Aegean, and to send packing the age’s only other contender as a ‘one umbrella’ world ruler.
THE MACEDONIAN INTRUSION
Alexander the Great’s Indian adventure, though a subject of abiding interest to generations of classically-educated European historians, is not generally an episode on which historians of Indian nationality bother to dwell. They rightly note that it ‘made no impression historically or politically on India’, and that ‘not even a mention of Alexander is to be found in any [of the] older Indian sources.’8 ‘There was nothing to distingui
sh his raid in Indian history [except “perfidious massacres” and “wanton cruelty”]… and it can hardly be called a great military success as the only military achievements to his credit were the conquest of some petty tribes and states by instalment.’9
Alexander’s great achievement was not invading India but getting there. A military expedition against the Achaemenid empire, originally planned by his father, became more like a geographical exploration as the men from Macedonia triumphantly probed regions hitherto undreamed of. Anatolia, the modern Turkey, was overrun in 334–3 BC. To protect his southern flank before invading Persia, Alexander then swept down through Phoenicia (Syria and Palestine) to claim Egypt and Libya. That was in 333–2. In 331–0 the last Achaemenid ruler was chased from his homeland and Persepolis was sacked. The twenty-five-year-old Alexander was now master of all that had comprised the largest empire the world had yet seen – all, that is, except for its easternmost provinces, including Gandhara and ‘India’.
Although Indian troops still served in the Achaemenid forces, it seems that Gandhara and ‘India’ had probably slipped from direct Achaemenid rule some time in the mid-fourth century BC. For Alexander it was enough that once upon a time these provinces had indeed been Persian; to excel Darius and Xerxes, he must needs take them. First, though, another long detour was necessary, this time along his northern flank. In 329–8 he pushed north-east into Arachosia (Afghanistan) and then crossed in succession the snows of the Hindu Kush, the swirling Oxus river and the parched scrubland of Sogdia (Uzbekistan). He then laid claim to the Achaemenids’ central Asian frontier on the distant Jaxartes (Syr) beyond Samarkand. It was not till late 327 BC that, returned to the vicinity of Kabul, he was ready with a force of fifty thousand to cross India’s north-west frontier.
Determined now to upstage not only the empires of Darius and Xerxes but also the mythical conquests of Heracles and Dionysos, Alexander seems increasingly to have seen his progress in terms of a Grail-like quest for the supposedly unattainable. He sought the ‘ocean’, the ultimate limit of terrestrial empire. Through knowledge of this great ‘beyond’, he aspired to a kind of enlightenment which, although very different from that of the Buddha, would become a cliché of Western exploration. More crudely, he hankered after sheer bloody immortality. ‘His motives need a little imagination,’ writes the best of his biographers, who then quotes one of Alexander’s companions: ‘The truth was that Alexander was always straining after more.’10
More was precisely what India offered. Like a tidal wave, news of Alexander’s prowess had swept ahead of him, flattening resistance and sucking him forward. Indian defectors from the Achaemenid forces primed his interest and paved the way; local malcontents promised support and provided elephants; judicious potentates sought his friendship. Principal amongst the latter was a king known to the Greeks as ‘Omphis’ or ‘Taxiles’. As the latter name implied, he was the ruler of Taxila, reportedly the largest city between the Indus and the Jhelum; and from a chance mention in an appendix to Panini’s grammar he has since been identified as Ambhi, an otherwise enigmatic figure in Indian tradition.
‘The first recorded instance of an Indian king proving a traitor to his country’11 seems an over-harsh judgement on the ambiguous Ambhi of Taxila. Alexander had divided his forces so that half marched largely unopposed down the Kabul river and across the Khyber Pass, while he himself led the remainder by a northerly route through the wintry hills to Swat. There, up among the pine forests of the supposedly impregnable hill fort of Aornos (Pir-i-Sar), he inflicted one of several vicious and salutary defeats on the mountain tribes. By the spring of 326 BC, when back in the plains he crossed the Indus to join up with the rest of his forces, the Macedonian’s reputation stood high.
A city built on trade and scholarship with little in the way of natural defences stood no chance. Taxila had survived the Achaemenids, indeed was a part-Achaemenid city. It could manage the Greeks in the same way. When Alexander descended to the Indus he found thousands of cattle and sheep, as well as elephants and silver, awaiting him. Ambhi, with nought to gain by resistance except the annihilation of his illustrious city and the applause of a very remote posterity, was playing safe. Alexander confirmed him as his satrap and generously repaid his liberality.
At the time Taxilan territory extended modestly from the Indus to the Jhelum. Beyond, occupying the next sliver of the Panjab between the Jhelum and the Chenab, the kingdom of ‘Porus’ lay across the invaders’ line of march. In Greek as in Indian tradition, Porus is all that Ambhi is not. A giant of a man, proud, fearless and majestic, he may have owed his name to Paurava descent, the Pauravas being only slightly less distinguished than the Bharatas in the pecking order of Vedic clans. Alexander had summoned him, along with other local rulers, to meet him and render tribute. Porus welcomed a meeting, adding casually that an appropriate venue would be the field of battle.
As good as his word, and despite the fact that the monsoon had already broken, Porus massed his forces on the banks of the Jhelum. Normally the monsoon brought all campaigning in India to an end. Indian troops were ill-equipped to fight in the rain, and Porus probably trusted to the flooding Jhelum to halt the enemy. But Alexander, well used to river crossings, organised boats, duped the enemy as to his crossing place, and between torrential downpours gained the further bank. The battle that followed was anything but a formality. Porus’ chariots slithered uncontrollably in the mud and his archers could find no purchase for their massive bows, one end of which had to be planted in the ground. Yet the Indian forces, though outnumbered as more of the enemy crossed the river, fought valiantly. Abristle with spearsmen, the elephant corps trundled across the battlefield like towering bastions on the move. Their repeated charges drove all before them, the Greeks merely peppering them with missiles as they reformed. But Alexander now knew enough of elephants to bide his time. His tactical skills were unmatched, and his cavalry easily outmanoeuvred their rivals. As the battle wore on, the Indians found themselves penned into an ever smaller circumference. Enraged elephants now trampled friend and foe alike. Exhausted, ‘they then fell back like ships backing water, and merely kept trumpeting as they retreated with their face to the enemy’. With shields linked, the Macedonian phalanx then pressed in for the kill. ‘Upon this, all turned to flight wherever a gap could be found in the cordon of Alexander’s cavalry,’ according to the account compiled by Arrian.
Porus, wounded but still conspicuously fighting from the largest of the elephants, was captured. ‘How did he expect to be treated?’ asked Alexander. ‘As befits a king,’ he famously replied. To the Greeks it sounded, under the circumstances, like an extraordinarily noble and fearless request. Alexander responded magnanimously, reinstating him as king and subsequently augmenting his territories. But Porus’ words could as well have been those of Lord Krishna, whose advice to Arjuna in the Mahabharata made much the same point. Each must live according to his dharma; it was the dharma of a ksatriya to fight and to embrace the consequences. Probably Porus was not boldly appealing to Alexander’s clemency, nor presuming on some brotherhood of sovereignty; he was simply stating his dharma.
After exceptionally elaborate celebrations, the Macedonians moved on, continuing east and south across the grain of the Panjab river system. The rains ended and the land blossomed. They crossed the Chenab, then the Ravi. Countless ‘cities’ capitulated, others, some evidently republican gana-sanghas, offered a short-lived resistance. Even to Alexander it was becoming apparent that ‘there was no end to the war as long as an enemy remained to be encountered’. Rumours of the vast forces commanded by the Nandas of Magadha (the ‘Gangaridae’ and ‘Prasii’ to the Greeks) now began to infiltrate the ranks. ‘This information only whetted Alexander’s eagerness to advance further,’ says Arrian. The Ganga, mightier even than the Indus, must surely carry them to the ocean at the end of the world. Its plain was reported as exceedingly fertile, its peoples excellent farmers as well as doughty fighters, and its governments civilised and
well organised. Alexander sniffed the prospect of an even more glorious dominion.
But his men were unimpressed. They crossed what is now the frontier between Pakistan and India somewhere in the vicinity of Lahore. Then, near Amritsar, they reached the Beas, fourth of the Panj-ab, the ‘five rivers’. In this weird and interminable land where the clothes were all white and the complexions all black, it was as good a place as any for a showdown with their commander.
Alexander sensed the mood of mutiny. In a lengthy appeal to his commanders he invoked their past loyalty and stressed the consequences of retreat. Extricating themselves would be difficult. Were the tide of conquests now to ebb, they would find the sands sucked from under their feet. New friends would review their allegiance and old enemies would take their chance. Trumpeting an empty defiance, the Greeks would find themselves backing away amidst a shower of missiles just like Porus’ exhausted elephants.
But to men who had been on the march for eight years, such arguments had little appeal. They had bathed in the Tigris and the Indus, the Nile and the Euphrates, the Oxus and the Jaxartes. Across desert, mountain, steppe and field they had trudged for over twenty-five thousand kilometres. Of victory, booty, glory and novelty they had had their fill. With respect and real affection, they listened to their leader, moved but unpersuaded.
Alexander withdrew to his tent like his hero Achilles. A three-day sulk made no greater impression on the men’s resolve, while a sacrifice for safe passage of the river produced only adverse omens. In the end Alexander had no choice but to announce a withdrawal. The banks of the Beas erupted with cheers of relief; many wept but all rejoiced. As Arrian noted, Alexander was vanquished only once – and that by his own men.