The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c25.196

v1.c25.196

We know, of course, that Alexander's dream came to nothing. The European in India faded away. But it is a mistake when we judge the dream by its actual result. For the experiment was never really tried; it was frustrated at its inception by an event which no one could have foreseen,—Alexander's premature death, without an adequate heir, less than two years after he quitted India. The realisation of the dream all depended upon the Empire's holding together for a century or two. Had Alexander lived to a normal age, there is no reason why it should not have done so. As it was, the rapidly constructed fabric, its cement still soft, fell quickly to pieces. If a military occupation of eight years or so left no permanent trace upon the north-west of India, we can hardly infer from that the essential unreceptiveness of India for Hellenism. Had the occupation been prolonged for a series of generations, the result might have been very different. The idea, ineradicable from modern journalism, that 'the East' (whatever that vague term may denote) is by its nature impervious to the rationalistic culture of ancient Greece and modern Europe is not supported by the facts, either by what happened in ancient Syria, or what happened in the Muhammadan kingdoms of the Middle Ages, or by what is happening to-day in India, China, and Japan. When the rest of the East, after the passage of phalanx and legion, 'plunged in thought again,' it was thought profoundly modified by the Greek schoolmaster who followed in the soldier’s train. In India Hellenic rationalism¹ would have come into contact with more elaborate homegrown systems of imaginative thought or intuition than the nearer East afforded. What would have happened we cannot say; but that the contact would have left either unaffected is highly improbable.