Around 332BCE the_______ name the region _________ in reference to the Indus River
Answers
Reached the Indus (326-323 BCE)
Aditi Shah
December 2nd 2019
There is an old story mentioned by the 2nd-century Greek historian Arrian -
Advancing with his army towards the great city of Taxila, Alexander chanced upon a group of holy men or sadhus who stamped their feet in front of him. On being asked about their odd behaviour, they addressed Alexander, “O King, every man can possess only so much of the earth’s surface as this we are standing on. You are but human like the rest of us, save that you are always busy and up to no good, traveling so many miles from your home, a nuisance to yourself and to others. Ah well, you will soon be dead, and then you will own just as much of this earth as will suffice to bury you.”
This dramatic encounter, probably more imagined than real, was prophetic. The charge of the Macedonian conqueror, which saw him take over a vast swathe of land from Greece to northwestern India and annihilate the mighty Persian empire, would be brought to an abrupt end in the land the Greeks called Caucasus Indicus or the ‘Hindu Kush’.
At 30, Alexander was spent after years of his gruelling march. His soldiers were even more tired, dejected, confused and desperate to get back home. But the brief encounter that Alexander would have with the land of the Indus would turn out to be a pivotal event in history as the great conqueror turned back, was attacked and humbled, and eventually died.
It was also a point where two great civilizations, that of the Greeks and the Indians, intersected. The encounter left a lasting impression in the way the West saw India - as a land of exotic wealth - and the way the subcontinent viewed the West. It is telling that even today, the very term for foreigners in Sanskrit is Yavana, a word first coined for Ionian Greeks!