Age of the Nandas and Mauryas c9.s6.7

c9.s6.7

The losses on the Indian side were indeed terrible; but the Greek accounts seem to exaggerate them while they are at great pains to conceal the losses on their own side. ‘The loss of the Indians in killed’, affirms Arrian, ‘fell little short of 20,000 infantry and 3,000 cavalry, and all their chariots were broken to pieces. Two sons of Porus fell in the battle, and also Spitaces, the chief of the Indians of that district.....The elephants, moreover, that escaped destruction in the field were all captured. On Alexander’s side there fell about 80 of the 6,000 infantry which had taken part in the first attack, 10 of the horse-archers who first began the action, 20 of the Companion cavalry, and 200 of the other cavalry’. Propaganda is not so modern an art as we may imagine! But the most decisive proof of the desperate nature of the struggle with the elephants and of the impression it produced on the minds of Alexander's generals is found in the course of subsequent events. The generals soon developed a stout opposition to further advance into India, and Seleucus, who had seen something of the Indian elephants in the battle of the Jhelum, when he became king was ready to cede whole provinces in order to secure an adequate number of these noble animals for his army.