11/29/2023 0 Comments Alexander meets diogenesThe heat, dust, dirt, and mosquitoes of India have been known to enfeeble the sturdiest man! However, according to Plutarch, one of the principal sources for Alexander’s military sojourn in India, the Greek soldiers had been instigated to revolt by a number of naked philosophers. The soldiers were weary with fighting besides, if we recall the common perception of India, the country has a way of taking a toll of people. Not along after this military triumph, Alexander’s troops mutinied and demanded that the journey back west be commenced. Though Alexander is described as having vanquished the Indian king Porus at the battle of the Jhelum, it is said that Porus’s noble demeanor and valor so impressed Alexander that he allowed the defeated king to continue to govern his territories in Alexander’s name. The story of his ‘invasion’ of India has been told often enough, and is not without some peculiar features, among them the fact that not a single contemporary Indian source could be bothered to note or comment on this supposedly earth-shaking event. World conqueror that Alexander sought to be, India was never far from his horizon and it is in 326 BCE that he arrived in northwest India. A Greek prince’s education at that time doubtless included something about India and its fabled riches. Teaching a survey course on Indian history, I have recently had occasion to contemplate the nature of this storied encounter, and a chance reading of Vikram Chandra’s Red Earth and Pouring Rain (1995) has brought to mind the pleasures of thinking about what might have transpired in this meeting of East and West, military might with spiritual pride, the over-dressed and the under-dressed, the power of arms and the piercing strength of words.Īlexander is reputed to have been Aristotle’s pupil, and it is from the Greek philosopher that he might have imbibed some interest in books, philosophizing, and the nature of wisdom. Of all the stories told about Alexander the Great, none perhaps is as colorful as the account of his encounter with the ‘naked philosophers’ of India who have come to be known in Western literature as gymnosophists. Naked Power and the Power of Nakedness: Alexander (the Great) & the Gymnosophists Set of 4 Articles on Vivekananda & the American Legacy.Return to the Womb: The NRI in the Motherland.Jindal and America: A Marriage in Heaven. Indo-Mauritians and the Innocents: A Photo Gallery.Diaspora Purana: The Indic Presence in World Culture.Gulf Indians and the Hierarchies of NRIs.From Masjid to Mandir: Across the Corentyne, Into Suriname.Contemporary Electoral Politics in Trinidad.
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