Indian accounts of the Battle of the Hydaspes River exist
the verdict
CONTESTED
contested - evenly split
refutedsupported
the weight of evidence
1 source for · 1 against
Reference consensus and historical analysis indicate that no contemporary or historical Indian accounts of the Battle of the Hydaspes River have survived, with available literary accounts stemming primarily from Greco-Roman and later eastern traditions.
The article focuses on a very particular episode of the eastern Alexander legend, i.e. the building of an extraordinary “metal army” employed by Alexander in his war against the Indian King Porus, which is present in at least three Persian accounts written between the tenth and fourteenth centuries CE: the “Book of Kings” (Shāh-nāmeh) by Ferdowsi, the “Book of Dārāb” (Dārāb-nāmeh), attributed to Tarsusi, and an “Alexander-book” (Eskandar-nāmeh) in prose copied by ʿAbd al-Kāfi ibn Abu al-Barakāt. Compared to the most remote source, the text of Pseudo-Callisthenes, and to the closest ones (the Armenian version of the fifth century, the Syriac text of the sixth‒seventh centuries, and the Hebrew version of the tenth‒eleventh centuries), it is argued that the Persian authors have not passively received the inherited materials; on the contrary, they have been able to liven up the scene of Alexander’s battle against the Indian King Porus by bringing onto the battlefield a fiery and phantasmagorical army of metal, giving us one of the more amazing episodes in the eastern legend of the great Macedonian.
# Are there Indian accounts of the Battle of the Hydaspes Rivers?
Tags: war, india, sources, alexander-the-great
- Score: 16
- Views: 2361
- Answers: 1
- Answered: yes
- Asked by: user4560
- Asked: 2014-08-16
- Edited: 2018-11-01
- Site: history
## Question
Are there Indian accounts of the Battle of the Hydaspes River?
If so, what are they, who authored them, and how do they differ from the Greek & Roman accounts?
## Answers
### Answer by nograpes (score: 11)
There are no Indian accounts of the Battle of the Hydaspes River.
It is difficult to prove a negative, but since there is very little historical material from that era (326 BCE) at all, we can be reasonably certain that there are no historical accounts. Tarn (1966) discusses this when talking about the Bactrian Greeks.
Had the story of the Bactrian Greeks survived, it would be considered
one of the most remarkable of a remarkable time; but though it was
treated by two Greek historians of the Farther East (Chap. II),
nothing has come down to us directly but some fragments and scattered
notices and the coins. And there is not even the help which can be got
in Indian from Indian literature and inscriptions and fro