The Equestrian Tale

                   image: http://www.cartoonstock.com/newscartoons/cartoonists/rbo/lowres/rbon179l.jpg

We will kick off with one of the most famous horses and a famous equestrian. One of the greats of the pre-christian era that history reckons. Alexander, the great, from Macedonia was unarguably one of the most famous conquerors of the ancient world. He was ambitious. He had the gift of being under the tutelage of Aristotle, the famous student of Plato. It was Aristotle who inspired Alexander of the world conquest.

Plutarch (46 AD -120 AD), a Greek historian, describes the way in which Alexander, although young took possession of Bucephalus, despite the fact that the soldiers in Philips’s army were not able to control the horse. Right from his childhood he had rivaled the fame and the valor of Achilles, another Greek myth hero.

It is really breathtaking when we read that Alexander’s small but trained army defeated a much larger Persian army and drove Darius out of Persian. The battle with Darius III, the Persian emperor was a victorious one that brought Babylon and all its riches to Alexander and increased his thirst for more conquests. He set his eyes on the land beyond the Hindkush mountains. He quelled a number of tribes on his way to India.

By then winning had become the habit of Alexander, his generals and the Greek army. But the Greek army, after years of travel away from home had reduced considerably in size, because of wars, diseases and also responsibility. At every sensitive region along his line of conquest, Alexander allowed some of his generals for peaceful administration and ruling.

Also the remaining soldiers had grown weary of the continuous wars; fatigue had set in among them. Many of the remaining soldiers did not wish to fight at all. Till this point in history, all the historians speak the truth and history has a lot of versions beyond the Hindkush.

Not many of us read or know about the change in behavior and attitude of Alexander during his conquests. Not all of us know the truth about the change in the war strategies he adopted and least of all his sexual orientation. What we are taught or we read are mostly about the exploits and conquests of Alexander. We will be able to justify the goodness of such descriptions if such things are present in a third grade book for character development! But the blatant truth is not present even in the annals of history.

Moving on with Alexander, we have a lot of reluctant to fight, tired, sick, war sick, home sick soldiers with a few war hungry ones.

It was Jhelum now. The river was ready to be invaded. Alexander, being a great general himself was now in a fix. He knew that the war was going to be devastative for Greeks if he was going to take on Purushottama, (Porus) in day light with his fatigued soldiers. The strategy was one of a nocturnal surprise. The soldiers of Porus, as Alexander expected, would be sleeping and would be taken in by surprise if attacked at night.

All set. Jhelum was crossed. It was not Porus who was surprised but it was the equestrian from Macedonia who met with the surprise. An army of elephants was waiting for the ambush. The battle was gory: The elephant archers breaking the defense of the Greek phalanx, the elephants hurling the Greeks in air and the Indian archers beheaded and elephants fatally wounded.

The Greeks had never fought in such conditions and against such an army. Now the Greeks are not conquering but just defending the counter offense. Soon it was the turn of Alexander to motivate the Greeks. Alexander himself charged in at one of the elephants.

Awake. All the historical accounts speak the same even till here. What happens after this?

The brave Alexander, on his bucephalus was charging onto the tusker. The elephant was creating a mound of grave of the Greek phalanx. And here in this encounter the horse is pierced and is dead very shortly and Alexander was fatally wounded. As always, when the king is wounded, the kinsmen guard him back to his castle away from the enemies. This is what happened in the case of Alexander, the great also. Porus was not pursuing Alexander and his men. Porus was not seeking victory. It is not the Indian philosophy. It is not what we are taught. It is not the Indian way of life. We are always self-contended. It is entreating to say that India, having fostered so many big empires and emperors, never strayed beyond the Hindkush. Isn’t this amazing?

India has not invaded any nation. It was India which was invaded all throughout the history and adopted any stranger and customs as its own. One cannot sight many wars and battles in India which were ambition driven or greed driven. It has always been a mechanism of self defense rather than an offensive attack.

This incident is what the Greeks found difficult to digest and changed the course of the history.

It is this part of the movie Alexander by Oliver Stone , the battle of Hydaspes, that speaks the truth which for centuries has been waiting to burst out.

Some accounts also say that Porus used just one twelfth of his elephant power for the battle on the banks of river Jhelum with Alexander. The kingdom of Porus was a small kingdom on the banks of Jhelum. On the other side of the kingdom of Porus lay the vast Gupta empire which in taking the shape of the powerful Mauryan Empire in the spirits of two of the earliest statesmen India had produced, Chandragupta and Chanakya.

When the small kingdom could make the Greeks retreat, any takes on the Guptas or the Mauryas?

Soon after the battle at Jhelum,(Hydaspes is how the Greeks call Jhelum), the fatally wounded and the dead horse Bucephalus was buried at a place on the banks of the river which Alexander named as Bucephala just like the city of Alexandria.

The rest of the history is again undisputed till the death of Alexander.

Every nation boasts the greatness of its past, even though it does not have any. Why is it in India, even if the past is a glorifying one, why is it that we hesitate to accept that? Why is it that we try to be submissive? We need not invade any nation but why cannot we even praise someone who defended the nation, instead glorify a foreigner who came in to invade us?

I am sure, this is the version of the incident which most of us would have studied in our history books:

Porus fought bravely. But he was defeated, chained and brought in front of Alexander. Porus held his head high despite his defeat and demanded a king’s respect from a king. This unstinting nature of Porus pleased Alexander and made him give the kingdom back to Porus, stop fighting and go back to Babylon.

There is no doubt that Alexander is one of the greatest generals of the ancient world, probably of all time. Why should truth be faked to glorify another? Why should the true be belittled for the deification of another?

Isn’t Alexander a great general despite his retreat at Jhelum?

History is often written by the winners???