Please man.
Hindus says he was Puru or Purushottam.
Persians say he was Porushasp or Porus.
The Greeks called him? PORUS.
Arrian and Plutarch are THE leading authorities of those times (Alexander's campaigns).
This entire area (west of Indus Pakistan) was under the Persians.
The Persians had a vast empire that the emperor ruled by Satraps (Herodotus).
The Hindu word-play to explain the genealogy of Satraps does not hold water when looked at against the backdrop of Greek (and ancient Chinese) accounts.
Now modern day Persians are understandably detached from their pre Islamic history. But there are tons of boys named Porus among both Iranian Zoroastrians and Parsis. I have a Porus in my family too btw.
How many Hindu boys named Porus? ZERO. How many of you guys in Pakistan named Porus???
But looked at in the big picture, what was Porus to the Persians really? When they had 5000 years of great warrior kings and emperors who ruled continental sized empires and took the fight to the Greeks and then the Roman empire?
Porus was a peripheral Satrap. A brave man. A great warrior. A shrewd general. Fantastic battle-craft. And he stuck one for the team to a man greatly hated by Persian bloodlines for what he did to us and our heritage. No Persian calls him Alexander the Great. He's always Alexander the Fag or versions thereof ...
Anyways I digress.
Now take the Indians. I mean that word civilizationally. Not Hindus. Am sure you appreciate that.
What has been their achievements militarily at the global scale? Outside their land? Expeditionary forces? Naval power?
It is understandable for them to want to ride on Porus's exploits.
But the reality is a mixed bag. Yes the army was Indian soldiers. Infantry. Archers. Elephants. The populace overseen by Porus and his closest Persian chieftains was also Indian. Paying their taxes to the Persian emperor. The battle-craft (if you go closely into Arrain's account of the battle movements along the river, and the deployment of the elephants) was a mix of Persian and traditional Indian plains warfare.
But Porus was not Indian. He was as Persian as they come.
And yes. There WAS an Indian Puru. Who hated the Persian Porus. That is another story in itself. In terms of Alexander sidelining one for the other as his Satrap, and adding to his dominion post the famous battle.
Read below the account by John D. Clare -
Alexander Rules His Empire
After his escape from the Gedrosian (Makran) desert, Alexander and the remnants of his army recovered at Susa (324bc).
The events of the year which followed are important for historians for it was in this time that Alexander stopped being a general (336-324bc) and started being the ruler of an empire (324-323bc).
1. Purge of the Satraps
As he had conquered each satrapy in the years up to 324bc, Alexander had taken control of the treasury and the army, and often left a Macedonian garrison in place but, generally,
he had been prepared to re-appoint Persian rulers who surrendered to him (e.g. Mazaeus, Atropates, Abulites, Tiridates, Oxyarchus, Porus). This may have been to encourage other rulers to come over to his side without fight, but it probably was also connected to the fact that he was continually marching and fighting and did not have time to organise an empire.
Returning to Susa, Alexander found that these arrangements had not worked successfully. Believing that Alexander would not return,
Arrian says, they had committed offences relating to ‘temples, graves and the subjects themselves’. The word he uses for ‘offences’ also means ‘playing out of tune’, so how much the satraps had been indulging in criminal activity, and how much it was simply that Alexander now wished to place his own stamp upon the government of the empire, we will never know.
About a dozen men (including Abulites and his son Ozathres) were executed, ‘in order to inspire others who might be left as viceroys, governors, or prefects of provinces with the fear of suffering equal penalties with them if they swerved from the path of duty; this was one of the chief means by which Alexander kept in subordination the nations which he had conquered in war...’ (Arrian 6.27).
This is significant because, in their places – although he did keep some Persian satraps, such as the brilliant Atropates – Alexander generally appointed Macedonians. At the time of Alexander’s death, 15 of the 24 satraps and 21 of the 24 garrison commanders were Macedonian; Alexander’s empire was overwhelmingly a ‘Macedonian Empire’.
2. Harpalus
Harpalus, the son of a Macedonian nobleman, had been left at Ecbatana in charge of the Macedonian Army Commissariat. According to Diodorus, he moved to Babylon, where he spent the royal treasury on a decadent lifestyle, including two high-class prostitutes from Athens.
When Alexander returned and stared purging his officials, Harpalus fled to Athens with thirty ships, 6,000 mercenaries, and 5,000 talents; and when first Alexander’s ambassador Philoxenus, then Antipater, and then Olympias demanded his extradition, the Athenians refused – what had been corruption seemed rapidly turning into a sizeable rebellion.
(i.e. in early 323bc, Greece seemed to be on the edge of revolt – although, actually, the Athenians refused to rebel, threw Harpalus into prison, and stole his wealth, and when Harpalus escaped to Crete he was murdered, possibly by Philoxenus.)
This is significant because:
1. we see that Alexander was not absolute ruler of the Greek states, which were still quite capable of saying no to him.
2. historians believe that the implication of Greek mercenaries in the affair persuaded Alexander that he had to do something about the Greek mercenaries in Asia, and led to the Exiles Decree.
3. The Rebellion at Opis
In August 324bc, allegedly to please his aging veterans, Alexander paid off their debts and told them he was sending them back to Greece. They mutinied.
Arrian (Book 7, Chapter V) gives a detailed account. Alexander immediately executed 13 men he identified as the ringleaders, told them that they could go where they liked, retired to his tent for a two-day sulk … and appointed 10,000 Persians as his guard. Realising that – unlike at the Hyphasis – they were no longer indispensible and could be replaced and end up with nothing, the mutiny collapsed, and Alexander celebrated with a service and ‘
prayer of reconciliation’.
This is significant because:
1. we see him ‘playing off’ Greeks against Persians – replacing Greek with Persians – rather than trying to ‘fuse’ them.
2. was the ‘prayer of reconciliation’, therefore, a statement of general policy, or simply a specific statement to close this specific episode?
4. The Marriages at Susa
Alexander had already (335bc) used a mass wedding to unite ‘highland’ and ‘lowland’ Macedonians; in 324bc
Arrian decribes how he used the same strategy, marrying some 92 of his Macedonian high command into Persian royalty and nobility.
This is significant because, it has been interpreted as evidence of Alexander’s ‘fusion’ policy, but:
1. It involved only the ruling elite – not peoples or cultures
2. It looks to me more like a policy to compromise and restrict a clan-oriented elite by imposing blood-obligations upon them towards families which otherwise might have been their enemies
Cheers, Doc
