The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c25.95

v1.c25.95

A picture of the Indian line of battle is given us. The elephants were drawn up along the front like bastions in a wall. The enemy would be obliged, either to attack the unfamiliar monsters directly, or go in between them to get at the masses of Indian foot behind. The line of foot projected on each side beyond the elephants, and, beyond the foot, cavalry was stationed to guard either flank, with chariots in front of them. An image of some god, Kṛishṇa or Indra, was held aloft before the ranks¹. In the midst of his army the Indian prince had his seat upon an elephant of exceptional size, his own magnificent frame encased in a hauberk of cunning workmanship, which left nothing but his right shoulder bare—visible to all and surveying all. The Indian army waited, a great stationary mass, whilst the monotonous yet exciting rhythm of the drums and the trumpeting of the elephants filled the air, to see how the more mobile European force opposed to it would develop the attack. As in the former fight that morning, it was a cloud of 1000 mounted archers from Central Asia, which first rolled out upon the Indian left and covered the cavalry there with flights of arrows. Their arrows might have been answered more effectually from the Indian ranks, were it not that the rain-rotten slush underfoot made it impossible for the Indian archers to get a firm rest for their long bows. To repel this attack the Indian cavalry on the left wing began to execute some wheeling movement, but while it was still incomplete the Macedonian horse-guards, led by Alexander himself, bore down upon them. The battle, so much we can say, was decided by the cavalry. Alexander's onset was supported by another body of European horse under the Macedonian Coenus. What exactly the manœuvre of Coenus was is obscure; the phrases in our authorities are of doubtful interpretation, and what is offered in printed texts is sometimes the conjectural emendation of a modern editor². The Indian cavalry was unable to hold its own against the Macedonian horse, practised in a hundred fights over half Asia. The irretrievable defeat of the Indian cavalry threw the infantry into confusion, and the crush in the centre made the elephants a terror to their own side. When the European infantry came into action, all resistance had become hopeless, and what followed was not fighting, but butchery. Between the broken squadrons of horse plunging amongst them and the rushes of the maddened elephants, the Indian army was reduced to a bewildered mob¹. A part of the mob surged backwards in a wild attempt to regain the camp from which they had set out, and a certain number succeeded in getting through the cruel ring of the enemy's cavalry. But by now the division of Craterus had crossed the river, and these exhausted fugitives therefore only found new bodies of Macedonians, fresh and unbreathed, barring their way. They were mown down without a possibility of escape or resistance. Among the thousands who, the Greek books affirm, perished on that day—'were the two sons of Porus, Spitaces the "nomarch" of that district, all the great captains of Porus.'