The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c25.56.1

v1.c25.56.1

Aornus, we are told, was not far from the modern Amb; it was a great isolated mass of rock, 6670 feet high, flat on the top with precipitous sides, which on the south went down straight to the river Indus. On the summit were woods and watersprings and fields whose cultivation could keep a thousand men employed. It seems plain that an object of this kind can hardly have escaped modern geographers in search of it. The inference is that some particulars in the Greek account are due to imagination. But when once we begin to trim it so as to suit the actual topography, it depends on a more or less arbitrary selection which particulars we eliminate and which we retain. There is at any rate no reason to doubt that the final conquest of this mountain region did involve the reduction of some exceptionally strong rock-citadel, in which fugitives of the defeated tribes made a last stand. The citadel, when taken, was held for Alexander by a garrison under the Indian Çaçigupta. The capture of Aornus had to be followed by another short expedition further up into the hills, in pursuit of the flying defenders of the fortress. They were led by the brother of the Assakenian chief killed in Massaga² and had with them a herd of fifteen war-elephants. To the Greeks the idea of getting hold of these animals, so strange and wonderful to them, of whose value in battle they had probably formed an even exaggerated notion, made their pursuit the more eager.