BY
W. H. MORELAND, C.S.I., C.I.E.
AND
ATUL CHANDRA CHATTERJEE
G.C.I.E., K. C.S.I.
FROM Bihar and Oudh we turn to the Indus plain, the region now divided between the Punjab, Sind, and the North-West Frontier Province. It will be recalled that there are some grounds for believing that the Aryans had extruded their predecessors from this region, so that there was less oppor- tunity here for such a fusion of cultures as occurred further east; and it has been conjectured that the Aryans of the Punjab may have maintained relations with their kinsmen who had occupied Persia. There are some indications in the later Vedic literature that the Punjab was despised by the inhabitants of the Gangetic plain, and it is possible that in the early days it looked west rather than east; but our knowledge of facts begins only with the end of the sixth century B.C., when a portion of it belonged to the Persian Empire.
PERIOD
OF PERSIAN RULE
The
history of Persia is an alternation of glory and eclipse, and one of its most
glorious periods dates from the reign of Cyrus (558-530), familiar to western
readers as the ruler who allowed the Jews to return from their captivity in
Babylon. In the course of his efforts to extend his empire, Cyrus advanced
eastwards from Persia, and con- quered the country then known as Bactria, which
corre- sponds roughly to the part of Afghanistan lying north of the Hindu Kush;
but it is improbable that he actually pene- trated as far as India. The
attention of his immediate successors was turned rather to the west than the
east, but Darius I (522-486) annexed a portion of the Indus plain, probably
about the year 518, and Persian rule appears to have continued in this region for nearly two
centuries. An Indian contingent, wearing cotton clothes, was included in the
army which Xerxes, the successor of Darius, sent against the Greeks in 480, and
Indian troops, together with a small force of elephants, appeared among the
Persian forces defeated by Alexander the Great a century and a half later,
while the tribute paid by the Indian provinces is recorded in an inscription of
Darius I. We may infer that these ordinary features of political domination,
tribute and military service, persisted during the intervening period, or most
of it, but we know nothing else regarding the nature of the Persian
administration, or how far it affected the life of the Indus plain. Nor is it
possible to speak with con- fidence regarding its extent; it covered the course
of the Indus down to the sea, but its eastern limit is uncertain, and we cannot
say how much, if any, of the Punjab was included.
In
330 B.C. Alexander the Great crushed the declining power of Persia, and
proceeded to complete the conquest of its eastern dependencies, and to
penetrate beyond them. After subjugating the countries which now constitute
Afghanistan, he entered India in 326, and, marching and fighting close under
the Himalayan foot-hills, reached the Beas, the fourth of the five eastern
tributaries of the Indus which give the modern name to the Punjab (Persian
panj-āb, 'five rivers'). He contemplated the conquest of the Gangetic plain,
but his army refused to go farther, and he marched down the Indus, which he was
thus forced to accept as the boundary of his dominions, leaving India in the
autumn of 325. His appearance in the country was merely an episode, and its
importance for the history of India lies in the fact that for a time it
established com- munication between Indian and Hellenic culture.
Alexander
himself meant to do much more than this. He regarded his conquests as
definitive, divided the Indus plain into satrapies, or provinces, and
established at strategic points walled cities with a nucleus of Greek popula-
tion drawn from his army, which were intended to develop into permanent
colonies of the ruling race. These plans were, however, frustrated by the
disputes among the Greek leaders which followed on his death in 323; the Greek
satraps, or viceroys, whom he had appointed, left India to take part in the
fighting further west, and were probably accompanied by the bulk of the
colonists; and eventually the eastern portions of Alexander's conquests fell
into the hands of Seleucus I, who, when he was firmly established in
Mesopotamia, decided to recover the Indian provinces. Meanwhile, however, the
position in India had been entirely changed by the establishment of the Maurya
empire under Chandragupta, as will be related in the next chapter. Seleucus
advanced to the Indus, probably very soon after 305, but came to terms with
Chandragupta and withdrew from the whole country, handing over to the latter
the Indus plain and the greater portion of Afghanistan. In this region Bactria
alone remained to the Seleucid empire, until in the middle of the next century
it became an independent Hellenic kingdom, which, as we shall see further on,
eventu- ally furnished two Greek dynasties to rule in the Punjab.
Several
of Alexander's officers wrote books describing their experiences in India, and,
if these works had survived, they might have furnished materials for a
tolerably precise description of the life of the time. The originals, however,
are lost, and the information taken from them by later writers is fragmentary
and inadequate for this purpose; but it suffices to show that, whatever earlier
cultural rela- tions may have been, the life of the Indus plain in Alexander's
time was Indian rather than Persian. The political condi- tions, the methods of
warfare, the presence of Brahmans and of ascetics, the practice of suttee, the
worship of Siva, and various other details fit in precisely with what we know
of the contemporary life of the Gangetic plain, and indicate that, though there
is no record of the process, Hinduism had by this time extended to the
north-western borders of India.
ALEXANDER
THE GREAT
Alexander came into relations with various Indian kings, and a large number of tribes not organised as kingdoms: the kings were at enmity among themselves, and also with the tribes on their borders, whom they were striving to bring into subjection. The two chief kings in the Punjab were called by the Greeks Taxila’s and Porus: the former name was derived from Taxila, the capital of his kingdom, lying between the Indus and the Jhelum, while Porus denotes the king of the Purus, whose dominions lay east of the latter river. These two kings were at variance, and the son of the former, named Ambhi, had negotiated with Alexander when he was still north of the Hindu Kush, while a little later the king himself waited on the invader in the Kabul valley. After Alexander crossed the Indus, he was received in Taxila by Ambhi, who had succeeded to the throne, and who asked him for formal investiture, thus recognising him as suzerain. Porus, on the other hand, decided on resistance, but was completely defeated in the battle for the passage of the Jhelum, made an honourable submission, and was reinstated in his kingdom, with large additions, under the conqueror's suzerainty. A third king, whose territories lay in the hill country east of Taxila, and who had hitherto played a double game, now made his submission; other kings, whose countries lay further east, either submitted or abandoned their kingdoms; and the tribes in this region were disposed of with little difficulty. Throughout there was no trace of solidarity among the Indian rulers: at variance among themselves, each played for his own hand, as was to be the ordinary rule in India for many centuries to come.
As
has been said above, Alexander appointed governors for his Indian provinces:
some of them were Greeks, but Ambhi and 'Porus,' whose personal name is not
known, were left in charge of much of the Punjab, their domains being separated
by the Jhelum; and, when the Greek power was eliminated from this region, they
naturally resumed their former position as independent rulers, but in a few
years' time their territories were included in the expanding Maurya empire.
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