The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c25.200

v1.c25.200

When Alexander died, it was plain that the imperial system in India was as yet anything but secure. It was not only a case of the people of the land proving restive; the Europeans themselves did not form a harmonious community. Although thousands of Greeks had fought, as mercenaries or allies, side by side with the Macedonians in the conquest of Asia, and to the Asiatics, no doubt, appeared indistinguishably as Yavanas, neither kindred people loved the other. It was specially Greek veterans whom Alexander had settled in his new eastern cities¹. In Bactria and Sogdiana we know that they had been settled very much against their will and tried at the first opportunity to make their way home. Their settlement in the remote colonies was sometimes a punishment for disaffection². We may conclude that the Greeks who had been planted in the Punjab did not find their surroundings congenial. Within a few months apparently of Alexander's departure, the Greek mercenaries under Philip rose in mutiny. Philip received a mortal wound. Instantly his Macedonian guards avenged his death upon the Greeks. Then orders came from Alexander that till a satrap was appointed to succeed Philip, the province should be administered by the rāja of Takshaçilā and Eudamus, the commander of the Thracians. This provisional arrangement was apparently still in force, when the news reached India in the summer of 323 B.C. that the great king was dead. Suddenly in Babylon his designs for conquest and organisation had come to an end.