National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books

trace the exact spot, memorable in Alexander's career, that was marked by his
famous 'altars'.

As against this negative conclusion, I may record the impressions which the
scene conveyed, unaltered as it has remained in its general character all these
centuries. As my eyes wandered again and again from the high banks of the
river across the great flat of fertile land extending to the horizon, it seemed as
if I could realize better the feelings with which Alexander's brave but hard-tried
Macedonians might have viewed this vista. Months of hard fighting and march-
ing in the intense heat of a Panjāb summer, alternately torrid and dank, had
brought them here face to face with those interminable plains stretching away
to the Ganges. Would not this sight, added to some knowledge of the vast
distances still before them, help to foster revolt from following their great
leader farther towards that ocean which his ambition had set as the limit of his
world conquest? Inviting enough all the riches of these fertile plains would
have appeared to Alexander's war-hardened troops while engaged in fighting
their way so valiantly across mountains and deserts to India. But once arrived
there, such a vista could only strengthen their longing to return to their distant
homeland; and here their invincible king was at last forced to give in to them.

Section ii—ALEXANDER'S PASSAGE OF THE HYDASPES

The task which by November 20th, 1931, led me from the bank of the Beās
to that of the Jhēlum was to look for the ground where Alexander achieved his
bold passage of the Hydaspes and fought his great battle with Poros.¹ The
question as to its location had been long discussed, but no definite solution had
been reached, and opinions had remained divided. Different locations had been
proposed by those officers who in the course of the last century had occasion to
visit one portion or another of the ground where routes from the Indus crossing
the Salt Range lead down to the Jhēlum or Hydaspes, the Vitastā of Sanskrit
texts. Those scholars who concerned themselves with the question while at
work in their studies far away from India, could only try to weigh the different
opinions held in the light of the interpretations they were inclined to put upon
the classical records of Alexander's Indian campaign. Neither those early
visitors to the ground since the days when Sir Mountstuart Elphinstone's
famous Mission passed the Jhēlum in 1809, nor the scholars in Europe discussing
the proposed locations, had enjoyed the advantage of such accurate topographical