The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c25.69

v1.c25.69

East of the Hydaspes (Jhelum) the Paurava king had been watching the immense peril come near. He learnt of the alliance between his old enemy of Takshaçilā and the Yavana conqueror. He learnt that other princes of the land were tendering submission to the new power—his own kinsman, for instance, another Paurava, whose territory lay still further to the east, beyond the Acesines (Chenāb)³. In that moment of fear, the spirit of the great Paurava rose unshaken in the resolve to settle his relations with the invader by the arbitrament of arms. It would be a mistake to regard him as one who fought in the nationalist cause. The Paurava does not seem to have been moved by any thought of Indian solidarity against the European any more than the rāja of Takshaçilā. It was not India that he was going to fight for; it was his own honour and his own kingdom. His honour would not allow him to surrender anything without a fair fight, and all his old ambitions of constructing a great kingdom at the expense of neighbouring chiefs and the free tribes would vanish into air, if he gave way to a power which had made agreement with his rivals. And yet, if the Paurava was not a champion of nationalism, India may well reckon the proud and brave prince among her national heroes. Unhappily India has long forgotten his name. We know of him only through the Greek books which call him Porus. It would have seemed a strange fate to him, had any astrologer been able to predict it—to pass quickly out of the memory of his own people, and to be a familiar name for centuries in lands of which he had no conception, away to the West!