The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c25.37

v1.c25.37

The Europeans who had followed Alexander so far into Asia now entered the region in which the armies of the English operate to-day. At that season of the year² the hill-country must have been bitterly cold, and probably to some extent under snow. It was the same hill-country whose contours and tracks and points of vantage are studied now by British commanders; the tough highlander of the Balkans or of Crete climbed and skirmished with bow and javelin in 327 B.C. where the Scottish highlander was to climb and skirmish with rifle and bayonet two thousand two hundred years later. And yet it is impossible to follow the track of Alexander over these hills with any precision. We hear of little mountain towns stormed, of others abandoned by their inhabitants. But their sites cannot be identified. One must however note that at this point Alexander, in an ethnographical sense, entered India; for these hills, whose population at the present day is either Afghān or Kāfir, seem then to have been possessed by Indian tribes. The Açvakas, as their name apparently was in their native speech, were the first Indian people to receive the brunt of the invasion³. The fighting seems to have been of exceptional ferocity. At one place, where Alexander was wounded, the whole population was put to the sword. At another place we hear of a huge massacre, and 40,000 men taken captive. At a third place a body of Indians from the Punjab had come to help the local chieftain for hire. When the town capitulated, it was agreed that these mercenaries should transfer their services to Alexander. They encamped on a little hill apart. There, as they talked together, it seemed to them a horrible thing that they should march with the Yavanas against their own people. They determined to slip away, when night fell, and make across the hills for home. But when night fell, they found the hill beset on all sides with the soldiers of Alexander; for some one had betrayed their design. The Macedonians suffered none of them to live till morning¹.