Indian campaign of Alexander the Great

The Indian campaign of Alexander the Great began in 327 BC and lasted until 325 BC. After conquering the Achaemenid Persian Empire, the Macedonian army undertook an expedition into the northwestern Indian subcontinent. Within two years, Alexander expanded the Macedonian Empire to include Gandhara and the Indus Valley (present-day Punjab and Sindh in what is modern-day Pakistan), surpassing the earlier frontiers that had been established by the Persian conquest of the Indus Valley.

Quotes

K

• This invasion… appears to have remained unnoticed by the Indian tradition, although some foreign historians consider it to be the only large-scale event in the ancient history of India.
  • Kosambi, D. The Culture and Civilization of Ancient India. Moscow, Progress, 1968. English edition: Kosambi D. The Culture and Civilization of Ancient India in Historical Outline. London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1965.

M

• Gangaridai, a nation which possesses a vast force of the largest-sized elephants. Owing to this, their country has never been conquered by any foreign king: for all other nations dread the overwhelming number and strength of these animals. Thus Alexander the Macedonian, after conquering all Asia, did not make war upon the Gangaridai, as he did on all others; for when he had arrived with all his troops at the river Ganges, he abandoned as hopeless an invasion of the Gangaridai when he learned that they possessed four thousand elephants well trained and equipped for war.
  • Megasthenes, Indica (Megasthenes)|Indika]] Megasthenes. Quoted from the Epitome of Megasthenes, Indika. (Diodorus II, 35–42), Ancient India as Described by Megasthenes and Arrian. Translated and edited by J. W. McCrindle.

N

• It would also be perfectly right to say that Alexander did not conquer India, that is Bharat, the present Union of India, which will be very much in keeping with the well-known silence of Indian sources about Alexander.
  • A. K. Narain 1992, Journal Am Or Soc. 112:515-17, quoted in Chakrabarti, D. K., 1997. Colonial Indology: Sociopolitics of the Ancient Indian Past. New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers Pvt. Ltd. p 20

P

• As for the Macedonians, however, their struggle with Porus blunted their courage and stayed their further advance into India. For having had all they could do to repulse an enemy who mustered only twenty thousand infantry and two thousand horse, they violently opposed Alexander when he insisted on crossing the river Ganges also, the width of which, as they learned, was thirty-two furlongs, its depth a hundred fathoms, while its banks on the further side were covered with multitudes of men-at-arms and horsemen and elephants. For they were told that the kings of the Ganderites and Praesii were awaiting them with eighty thousand horsemen, two hundred thousand footmen, eight thousand chariots, and six thousand fighting elephants.
  • Plutarch's Lives Plutarch, Alexander, 62