The Battle of the Hydaspes: A Mystery in the Mists of Time

[Joe Shearer]

Explained in previous posts.



Srangadhara Paddhati, which in turn was largely based on Siva Dhanurveda Samhita, mentioned many times.
Reason of confusion is that you are mixing the shape of bow to that of construction technique.

Now last response, in your cascading style adopted in your previous posts;







This is the correct order and self explanatory.


Too many intervening posts, I agree, with you PM, you may take the initiative for the direction of thread.

I have been grappling with the posts made by Alternative for the past three hours (other unconnected pending assignments have been fortunately deferred by the late arrival, by a week, of a critical participant in discussions to be held), and have to report a difficult situation.

Alternative's arguments can be dealt with at the level of detail; this treatment is most unsatisfactory. He has opened issues and questions which are fundamental in historical research, not merely in military history. Any response that does not attempt to take a holistic view of his very difficult and fundamental attack will be enmeshed in a multitude of details and finally fall to earth under its own weight. Such a holistic view and its presentation really belongs outside the purview of this excellent forum: at any rate, I am hesitant to trespass on the hospitality of the web-master.

To give readers an example, we need to examine the historiography of Indian history, and the ways in which major themes and notions have been generated; ways in which sources have been sought and selected; and finally, ways in which data has been gathered, information has been generated from the data, and the information has been interpreted by historians. A selection, not necessarily complete, is appended, to give readers an idea of the dimensions of the task of response:

1. Earliest studies of Indian history and culture, excluding al Beruni and starting with the earliest European, especially British, historians, who depended on the Puranas and the epics in main: an attempt to classify, to clarify and to build a simple narrative to explain the confusion of information that greeted Europeans encountering India from the fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries (one is tempted to extend the period to the present date);
2. The intervention of Sir William Jones, Friedrich Max Mueller and the Aryan invasion school, a revised emphasis on the Vedas as a source, and a mistaken emphasis on Aryans as a race, in parallel with the Aryan-centric, racial theories of the Europeans in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, finally rising to a climax in the Nazi theories and failing by the mid-twentieth century;
3. The derivative account of the Dalits, assuming the Aryan invasion to be factual, identifying the original Aryans as present-day Brahmins, and the original inhabitants as the Austric and Dravidians of present-day India;
4. A radically different narration originated by the Chitpavan Brahmins who dominated the Maratha confederacy, the Peshwa's court, and the four great Maratha dominions of Bhonsles, Holkars, Scindias and Gaekwads, tending to show the origins of the Aryan race within India, dividing Indians into those who owe their primary allegiance to India and to Indo-centric systems of faith, and alienating external systems of faith unless their individual adherents committed their loyalty to Indo-centric systems; the origins of the Hindutva school articulated by Savarkar and Golwalkar and refined by sympathetic western commentators and contemporary Indian commentators;
5. A derivative of the Hindutva school originating in current Pakistan, the Indus Man theory, which seeks to show that the cultural roots and population of modern Pakistan originated in the boundaries of modern Pakistan, in an analogue of the Hindutva theory that the roots of Indian culture were confined to the boundaries of British India;
6. The divergent eastern Indian school which argues that there was never any great convergence of Gangetic/Indus culture and Brahmaputra culture, and argues that the religious and cultural history of eastern India was determined by the progression from autochthonous religion and cultural mores, to Buddhist (completely skipping the Aryanisation/Sanskritisation that other parts of western and northern India, and to a lesser extent, southern India suffered), to Tantrik to Muslim to reactionary reformatory Hindu and simultaneously bhakti-oriented Hindu, to a dominant, rebellious westernising theme;

Any answer that does not take these leitmotifs as a background will trivialise Alternative's deep-rooted critique.

Unfortunately, while it is just within my capability to grasp the dimensions, it is not certain that I have the depth of scholarship to pursue it to its logical end.

The choice is either to attempt a gradual and progressive, carefully reasoned and as carefully referenced account summarised above, or to seek to draw as much common ground as may be legitimately drawn from the two conflicting accounts presented in our discussion, and leave it to readers - and to Alternative - to come to their own conclusions. The second is unsatisfactory, but may be attempted within the boundaries of this forum. The first requires a more relaxed platform, and must necessarily be confined - by their personal decision, not by any artificial decision - to those interested in plunging right into a somewhat specialised subject. Pargiter, Rawlinson and Cunningham, R. C. Majumdar, H. C. Raychaudhuri and their ilk will figure heavily in these discussions; a knowledge of the Puranas and the post-Vedic literature will be useful.

Any suggestions by readers or by moderators - by anybody - will be welcome, as this present situation is confusing in the extreme. It is not clear what is the best way to proceed, and advice will be gratefully accepted.

 

[Joe Shearer]

How wrong you are;
The extant and depth of Knowledge, on many disciplines(I wonder if you could only name a few ) .... coupled with amazing display of expression and language, so effortlessly displayed by him (Joe Shearer) is the result of life long ardor, not some "reading a few chapters of history book".

I just saw this exchange and wish to express my humble gratitude for your kind words.

It has been, in fact, a lifelong love affair, and has survived an MBA course, life in the corporate world, stints in the steel industry, a dramatic conversion to IT, and a job travelling extensively, none of which contributed to this passion. During the course of this, there have been rare encounters with some whom I have found to be my peers or even superior; in this forum, Austerlitz, Road Runner (in spite of one single failure of insight which never ceases to astonish me, but which I propose to hold tenaciously close to myself) and you must number among them.

This is the first time that an extension of the scope of a debate has been forced upon me.

 

[Joe Shearer]

And while I wait for the divine afflatus, a few notes and comments in a desultory interval between cavalry charges by the opposition:

Here we have the refusal of rules of engagement. Between a view that holds that history and military history are essentially different, and a view that holds both are the same, it is difficult to find a meeting place.

Here my justification is that we are, in fact, not considering people, culture, economy, etc., etc., but are considering, within the context of a battle the appreciation of one commander's position, options and intentions.

There is no refusal on my part; discussion had broadened to include caste and other matters, and you pointed out the these are not a part of Military history.... so my was that if we are discussing an issue then what if it is little bit off topic (Mods, please have little patience)

The objection is that this is a case of being a semi-virgin: there is no such thing. Either one jumps in at the deep end, and converts this to a thorough-going historical discussion, or one stays out entirely. A discussion on military history that takes little bites at history on the side is possible when the questions raised are not as deep-rooted as some of the questions in this discussion have been.

The second problem still remains for your attention: there is no further evidence, so what would you like to do? And here, let us willingly agree that 'absence of evidence does not mean evidence of absence'.
Because there is nothing to discuss, no evidence? Oh, right, evidence doesn't matter, absence of evidence, etc.; the discussion does.

If that is what you want, by all means let us. You go first.

I raised a question, few hypothesis were presented and discussed, few including me persisted with question, interesting info exchanged, most, probably knew that a concrete answer would not be forthcoming. You, somehow don't seem to like the question itself. OK Fine.

The reasons for not liking the question itself are complex. Simplification is a trap for fools, and so I have no hesitation in falling for that trap.

Indian history writing, or thinking about history, has been significantly affected by the use of historiography of Indian history, that is, by the

historiography, Writing of history, especially that based on the critical examination of sources and the synthesis of chosen particulars from those sources into a narrative that will stand the test of critical methods...

for political purposes and to found social movements. I have sought, from the beginning to sound an alarm and stop all of us from rushing in where angels fear to tread. All to no avail; we find ourselves on the brink of doctrinaire warfare.

This has all the freshness and appeal of Ground Hog Day. In principle, good. In practice, bad. It is not at all clear that the practices of 2,200 years ago required a differentiation of the birth rites, maturity rituals and death and burial rites of a human being, depending on his or her race or caste, except for the upper three castes being different from the fourth, the Sudra. Any further differentiation seen today...This is a comparatively recent development, and extrapolating it backwards into historical times is bad history.

In Porus's time, there was no Sudra or such.
Caste differentiation was there,then, and conversely, how could you surely say that caste would not effects on daily life?
I maintain that caste differences were there, and rites 'would be' different for sure as can be evidenced empirically.
In short, caste was factor, significant enough to be considered now, unfortunately we are unable to determine that, if it could be done, may be we could solve the mystery of "Kshatriya".

On the contrary, as early as the Rg Veda, the conquered population, as depicted rather boastfully and with probable exaggeration by the hymnodist, was described as the Sudra.

Now, regarding caste differences and differences in rites, this is best signalled (not summarised, not indicated, but signalled) by the differences in funereal rites, at as elementary a level as the different length of ritual ceremony in days, of Brahmins and others in contemporary Hindu practice. It is almost certain, from examination of the Atharva Veda, and of other sources of information on practices of ancient India and early mediaeval India, that the rituals of the upper castes were identical, hence by implication the daily life and restrictions and enablements of daily life were identical, and therefore nothing significant would be gained by knowing Porus' caste.

..... Just remember, he's probably not a Jat, not a Rajput. The overwhelming indirect evidence is that he was a Kshatriya, but this is indirect evidence, it is generic evidence relating to the Vedic and Puranic ages, and does not take into account the plethora of contrary examples in the east of the Gangetic basin. Perhaps rightly, considering the attenuation of the acculturation process as it spread down the Ganges, considering that the old ways were freshest in the Punjab itself, as well as in the upper reaches of the Yamuna-Ganga Doab.

This is the post that I was looking for and would request for further elaboration "plethora of contrary examples in the east of Gangetic basin............"

Since we are to consider a 'plethora', I will take the liberty of taking these up in a separate following post, immediately after this in proximity, perhaps an hour or two later to allow me to refresh my memories from the text.

One'=Alexander III of Macedon, part-Illyrian, part-Macedonian king of Macedon, son of Philip II and Olympia;
'Other'=A king of a small tribe in the doaba of the Hydaspes and Hyphasis.

'One' had it all and 'Other' don't even have a proper noun.

Of course! The name is known in one case; in the other, we are not sure. It has been reported, variously, or reconstructed, as Puru, Paurava and Purushottam. As usual, there is no Indian record; we are dependent on Hellenistic records which only say "Porus", and on Indian reconstructions of a very dubious nature.

...... a blank response. The question is whether they move on, or return to this one, in a kind of fated, doomed return.

One would move on and other would ask question and try to find the answer, this is how the History move on.

If the question is asked, unless it is answered, we remain at the same place, at the same time. Which was my point, after all.