EXAMINE THE EFFECTS OF ALEXANDERS INVASION

EFFECTS OF ALEXANDERS INVASION (REF: B. N. LUNIA)

Alexander’s invasion did not create any impression on the minds of the Indians as it was confined to the western part of India. His expedition at best remained a mere raid on frontier provinces. Though he annexed Gandhara and the Indus Valley to the Macedonian Empire, they soon became independent and all traces of the short-lived Greek rule disappeared from India within two years of Alexander’s death. There is, therefore, little wonder if Indians ignored Alexander’s expedition. He came like a hurricane, stayed in India for nineteen months and departed from India leaving the heart of the country untouched.

For Indians he was a mere invader who disturbed the peace of a part of the country for some time and went away, eclipsing Chengiz Khan and Timur in committing atrocities and shedding considerable blood. Viewed from the broader stand-point, Alexander’s invasion, therefore, could have no importance. It was a mere raid that did not attract even the attention of the Indian writers.

Then, judging his generalship from the events in India, Alexander does not appear to be an outstanding figure and distinguished military genius. All that he achieved in India was a hard fought victory over Porus – a king of a petty state in Punjab, and that too, with the help of an Indian king, Ambhi, a bitter enemy of Porus and one who had betrayed the nation by unhinging the doors of India to a foreigner. In fact, it was a victory of a great general over a petty chief in a distant corner of India. His defeat did not affect the rest of India, much less was it a triumph of the West over the East.

But it seems that if the Indians have underestimated the importance of Alexander’s expedition, the Greeks have equally exaggerated it. The Greek writers like Arrian Curtius, etc., have exaggerated the significance of the event by devoting page after page to its description. They have taken pains to describe his campaigns and conquests in minutest details. To them Alexander was one of the greatest conquerors of the world.

However, it is wrong for the Indians to ignore Alexander’s invasion completely. It had direct and immediate result on the course of Indian History.

1. By seriously crippling the number of small warring kingdoms and tribes that abounded in the Punjab and Sind, Alexander paved the way for Chandragupta to give to the north-west India a political unity and make it a strong integral portion of the empire of Magadha. Thus, if Mahapadmananda was the predecessor of Chandragupta Maurya in the east, Alexander was the fore-runner of that Empire in the West.

2. Though the Punjab and Sind began to enjoy the blessings of a unified rule as the direct and immediate result of Alexander’s invasion, the Indians ignored the superiority of the Greek art of warfare. The Indian rulers and their military captains seem to have paid no heed to the Greek mode of warfare. They stuck to their traditional methods of fighting and continued for centuries to place their chief reliance on their elephant brigades.

3. But there is one historical gain in the date of Alexander’s invasion i.e., 326 B. C. The clearly dated records of Alexander’s Indian campaign left by his companions helped to build Indian chronology for subsequent political events on a definite basis. The date of Alexander’s invasion, in fact, forms the sheet anchor of Indian chronology.

In addition to this, the invasion brought in India a number of Greeks of eminence, who wrote the accounts of that time, and they have become important source of early Indian history. The original works of these Greek writers are lost, but quotations taken from them by latter writers are available today and it is from these fragments that we get a detailed picture of the political, social and religious conditions of India at that time.

4. Some historians think that Alexander’s campaign resulted in the opening up of new lines of communication and new routes for trade and maritime enterprise, which brought India and the West into closer contact with each other, facilitating cultural exchange between them.

Strabo points out that the Oxus (Amu Daria) joined a link in an important chain along which the Indian goods were carried to the European countries by way of the Caspian and the Black Sea. Patroclus, an admiral in the service of Antiochus I, the successor of Seleucus Nikator, also remarked that the route was a popular one in the third century B.C. Evidence of a brisk trade with India is also furnished by the coins of Greek models minted in Babylon and found in large numbers in the frontier province of India.

5. in addition to the above effects, the following distinct cultural effects of Alexander’s campaign must also be noted. The Greek kingdoms in Syria, Bactria and other parts of Asia which had been established on the disruption of Alexander’s Empire, produced, in the course of time, close cultural contact between India and Europe. It was this contact with these Indo Greek or Indo Bactrian kings that was responsible for the improvement of the Indian coinage. The coins of the Indo Greek rulers which were discovered in Taxila replace the older Indian Punch marked and ill shaped ones and the subsequent coins of India were cast on well shaped Greek models.

Another result of the contact, it is said, is that the system of Indian astronomy is largely influenced by the Hellenic system.

Again, during the reign of the great emperor Kanishka, Bactria formed a part of his empire. He invited, it is said, many Greeco-Bactrian sculptors to Gandhara for making images of the Buddha and Boddhisattvas. They blended the Greek and the Indian Art in image making. This led to the growth of a new type of sculpture, known as the Gandhara School of Art. It is another distant and distinct effect of Alexander’s campaign.

As regards to the Greeks, they learned a good deal of sciences, arts, philosophy, mathematics and medicine from India during the period of this contact. Indian philosophy greatly influenced Greek thought and culture. A host of Indians went to Greece and Asia minor and there the ideas of the East might have percolated. It has been also suggested that after the formation of the Greek kingdom in the northwest of India, Indian philosophy affected even Christianity.