The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c25.50

v1.c25.50

Whilst Alexander was fighting in the valleys to the north of the Kābul, the other division of the Macedonian army under Hephaestion and Perdiccas, accompanied by the rāja of Takshaçilā, made its way along the Kābul to the Indus. It may have been through the Khyber Pass that, one day in the cold weather season at the end of 327 or beginning of 326 B.C., the glitter of strange spears, long lines of mailed men, were seen emerging into the plain about Peshāwar—the advance guard of the European invasion of India. A few days' march farther, and they came to the Indus. Arrived there, the Europeans set about collecting material for the bridge which was to transport their fellows into the interior of the land. But their hold on the country west of the Indus was not yet secure. The region in which the division of Hephaestion and Perdiccas was now encamped formed part of the realm of a rāja, named by the Greeks Astes¹, whose capital was the town of Pushkalāvatī (Chārsadda) to the north of the Kābul river. The rāja at this moment declared himself an enemy of the foreigners. He was not strong enough to hold the open field against Hephaestion and Perdiccas, and shut himself desperately in some walled town. For a month he held it against the besiegers, and then the greater strength of the Europeans beat him down, and destroyed him. The principality was given to one who had been his enemy and become a hanger-on of the rāja of Takshaçilā, a certain Sangaya. He was a man upon whose loyalty the Yavanas could count.