The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c25.87

v1.c25.87

From the Greek books we know more than the Paurava could know of the movements which had taken place in the European army on that terrific night. While the rain poured in torrents and the lightnings struck men down here and there in the European columns, the king with a strong division¹—Macedonian horse and foot, horsemen from Balkh and Bukhāra, light-armed Balkan mountaineers and archers—moved to a point about seventeen miles from the European camp, where the fleet of river-boats was in readiness. As it drew near day, the storm abated, and in the first light the laden boats pushed off. In any circumstances, to embark upon an unknown river, swollen in flood, would have been sufficiently venturesome. A single bark carried the king and several of his great captains, men who in after days were destined themselves to rule great tracts of the earth and to plot against each other’s lives—Perdiccas, the future Regent, Ptolemy, one day to be king of Egypt, Lysimachus, to be king of Thrace and carry the Macedonian arms into what is now Roumania, Seleucus, who would inherit Alexander’s Asiatic empire. With so much history was one boat big, which in the early light of that gray morning swayed upon the blind eddies of an Indian river. It was one of the moments when Alexander threw himself upon luck, as represented by the chance play of natural forces. The point from which the boats put out had the advantage—it was chosen for that reason—of being hidden from the watchers on the opposite bank by a wooded island in mid-stream. It was not till the boats approached land that they came in sight, and sent the outposts galloping back to the Paurava. It was instantly clear that everything was a question of time: could the Indians reach the place where the Europeans had landed before the Europeans were ready to receive them? And here the luck of natural accidents came in. The Europeans soon discovered that the recent rain had cut off the place where they were from the proper shore by a swollen channel; they had landed on what was now practically an island. All depended on whether the channel was fordable. If it was not, the Europeans were caught in a trap. The question remained doubtful, as at point after point attempts were made, and the water proved too deep. Then a point was found where it was just possible for a man to cross, going into the strong current above his breast, and there men and horses struggled through. Onesicritus recorded words which, he said, burst from the king in the stress of that moment. They show a curious point of contact between the European then and the European now. For to-day India sees in the European some one living and moving and acting in its midst, whilst the public opinion which governs him, for which he really cares, is the opinion of a society thousands of miles away. At that moment, Onesicritus said, Alexander suddenly exclaimed, as the thought struck him that he was going through all this for the sake of a fame, which meant that people would talk and write about him at Athens¹!