The Political Institutions and Theories of the Hindus: A Study in Comparative Politics c11.t1.3

c11.t1.3

And this was not an empty word of the philosopher cited like a maxim, as it were, from the *Mahâbhârata*. We are told by Plutarch that Alexander experienced no less trouble from the priests, preachers, and religious teachers of India than from the warriors who “used to fight for pay”. It was the endeavour of the “philosophers” to fix a mark of infamy upon those princes, who, like the king of Taxila, declared for the Macedonian and became traitors to Indian independence. The free republican nations also were excited by what appear to be the learned and priestly classes, i. e., the *intelligentsia*, to take up arms against the alien invaders. Many are the Hindu philosophers who therefore had to espouse the martyr’s doom meted out to them by Alexander’s vindictive court-martial.