Such words as these live for ever, a veritable Light in the Darkness of many philosophies.

Yet even the Vedanta teaching failed to satisfy the masses; its atmosphere was too rarefied for them. So about the middle of the millennium a new Teacher arose. Gâutama Buddha was born about the year B.C. 560 at Kapilavâstu, and the followers of the religion of which he was the founder number at this present day nearly one-third of the whole human race.

A magnificent work truly, look at it how we may! Yet it becomes the more astounding when we enquire into the religion itself; for it holds out no bait to humanity. It neither gives the immediate and certain grip on a spiritual and therefore eternal life which the Vedanta promises, neither does it proclaim the personal individual immortality for which the Christian is taught to look.

Yet it holds its place firmly as first favourite with humanity. There are some five hundred million Buddhists, as against some three hundred million Christians; while about the tenth century of our era fully one-half the world's inhabitants followed the teaching of Gâutama.

Why is this? Wherein lies the charm? Possibly in its pessimism, in the declaration that all is, must be, suffering.

"Hear! O Bhikkhus! the Noble Truth of Suffering. Birth is suffering, decay is suffering, illness is suffering, Death is suffering.

"Hear! O Bhikkhus! the Noble Truth of the cause of suffering. Thirst for pleasure, thirst for life, thirst for prosperity, thirst that leads to new birth.

"Hear! O Bhikkhus! the Noble Truth of the cessation of Suffering. It is the destruction of desire, the extinction of thirst.

"Hear! O Bhikkhus! the Noble Truth of the Pathway which leads to the cessation of suffering. Right Belief, Right Aspirations, Right Speech, Right Conduct, Right Means of Livelihood, Right Exertion, Right-mindedness, Right Meditation."

In these few words lies the whole teaching of Buddhism. To king and beggar alike, the world is evil; there is but one road to freedom, and that must be trodden alike by all. In that road none is before or after others.

Now to the poor, to the oppressed, there is balm in this thought. Lazarus does not yearn for Abraham's bosom! Before all lies forgetfulness, peace, personal annihilation.

This, then, was the teaching which Gâutama Buddha, the son of a king, gave as a gift to his world; and his world, wearied yet once more with formalism, with the ever-growing terrorism of caste and creed, welcomed it with open arms. The progress of the Buddhistic faith was fairly astounding, and half India was converted in the twinkling of an eye. Of the life led by the founder himself much has been written. Many of the incidents bear a strange resemblance to those in the life of Christ. Perhaps none is more beautiful than the story of the woman who applied to Gâutama, begging him to restore her dead child to life. As given in Sir Edwin Arnold's Light of Asia, it runs so:--

Buddha, it will be observed, answered no questions. He left the insoluble alone. He simply preached that holiness meant peace and love, that peace and love meant pure earthly happiness.

So, even while they accepted the morality of Buddhism, and acquiesced in its negation, the keener speculative minds were still busy trying to find some key to fit the Great Lock.

The Yoga system of philosophy followed on the Sankhya, the Nyaya and the Vaisasika on the Yoga; finally, the two Mimamsa or Vedanta philosophies. Of these the Yoga is merely a repetition, with some alteration, of the Sankhya; the Nyaya--which is to the Hindu what the Aristotelian system was to the Greek, and which is still the school of logic--finds its complement in the scientific and atomic theories of the Vaisasika. This last, which is the first effort made in India to enquire into the laws of physics, is curiously provocative of thought. A Rip-van-Winklish feeling creeps into the mind as the eyes read that all material substances are aggregates of atoms, that the ultimate atom must be simple, that the mote visible in the sunbeam, though the smallest perceptible object, must yet be a substance, therefore a thing composed of things smaller than itself.

Once again the question arises, "How much further have we gone towards solution?"

Of the Vedanta system enough has already been said. It is pure Monism, matter being but a manifestation of the Supreme Energy, the Supreme Soul, the Supreme Self which comprises all things, holds all things, is all things.

So much for the speculative thought of this remarkable age. But when we turn to other subjects, we find the same truly marvellous acumen displayed in almost every field of enquiry.

Panini, whom Max Muller called the greatest grammarian the world has ever seen, lived in the middle of this millennium, and by resolving Sanskrit to its simple roots, paved the way for the Science of Languages. It is strange, indeed, to think of him in the dawn of days discovering what was to be rediscovered more than two thousand years afterwards, and adopting half the philological formulas of the present century.

So with geometry, a science which certainly developed from the strict rules concerning the erection of altars, as the science of phonetics grew from the study necessary to ensure absolutely accurate intonations of the sacred text. Of the former science much is to be found in the Sulva Sûtras; amongst other things, the celebrated theorem that the square of the hypothenuse is equal to the square of the two other sides of a rectangular triangle. This proposition is ascribed by the Greeks to Pythagoras, but it was known in India long before his time, and it is supposed that he learnt it while on his travels, which included Hindustan.

Geometry, however, was not destined to take hold of the Indian mind. The cognate science of numbers speedily took its place, and the acute Asiatic intellect soon evolved Algebra out of the arithmetic which they had rendered of practical use by the adoption of the decimal system of notation.

For all these many discoveries the world is indebted to this marvellous millennium.

Regarding the social life of this time the Dharma Sûtras give us endless laws--which are the originals of later and codified laws--concerning almost every subject under the sun. As every Hindu student (and every Hindu had to be student for a definite number of years) had to learn these Sûtras by heart, it may safely be predicted that they faithfully reflect the general conduct of affairs. They are extraordinarily minute in particular, and from them it may be gathered that life had become much more artificial. Amongst the king's duties is that of "guarding household weights and measures from falsification." It may also be noticed that "the taxes payable by those who support themselves by personal labour differ materially from those paid by mere possessors of property." Any injury, also, to a cultivator's land or to an artisan's trade was punished with great severity, and violence in defence of them was held justifiable. A legal rate of interest was settled, and the laws of inheritance were laid down minutely, as also were those of marriage. Indeed, as Mr R. C. Dutt puts it:--

"Everything that was confused during the Epic period was brought to order--everything that was discursive was condemned; opinions were arranged and codified into bodies of laws, and the whole social system of the Hindus underwent a similar rigid treatment."

Briefly, it was at once an age of keen speculation and rapid crystallisation almost unequalled in the history of any nation. Nor have we to found this estimate of it solely by inference from the literature which it has left behind it. We have other evidence on which to draw. True, the earliest foreign notice of India is that of Hekataios of Miletus, who wrote about B.C. 520, but he seems only to have been aware of its existence. The next is that of some inscriptions of the Persian king, Darius, which may be dated about B.C. 486, while Ktesias of Knidos, who collected travellers' tales about the East, wrote a little later. But Alexander's Indian campaign, which began in the year B.C. 327, brought many Western eyes to wonder at what they saw, and from this time Greece practically gives us the chronology of Hindustan.

Of what these Western eyes saw we gain glimpses in the few fragments of the works of Megasthenes which have withstood the destruction of time. Living, as he did, in the fourth century B.C. as Ambassador at the court of Pâlipûtra, he gives us a picture of the times well worth reading, with a few extracts from which this chapter may well conclude.

"The inhabitants, having abundant means of subsistence, exceed, in consequence, the ordinary stature, and are distinguished by their proud bearing. They are also found to be well skilled in the arts, as might be expected of men who inhale a pure air and drink the very finest water ... they almost always gather in two harvests annually; and even should one of the sowings prove more or less abortive, they are always sure of the other crop. It is accordingly affirmed that famine has never visited India, and that there has never been any general scarcity in the supply of nourishing food.... But, further, there are usages observed by the Indians which contribute to prevent the occurrence of famine among them; for whereas amongst other nations it is usual, in the contests of war, to ravage the soil, and thus to reduce it to an uncultivated waste, among the Indians, on the contrary, by whom husbandmen are regarded as a class that is sacred and inviolable, the tillers of the soil, even when battle is raging in their neighbourhood, are undisturbed by any sense of danger, since the combatants allow them to remain quite unmolested. Neither do they ravage a land with fire nor cut down its trees.... The Indians do not raise monuments to the dead, but consider the virtues which men have displayed in life and the songs in which their praises are celebrated, sufficient to preserve their memory.... All the Indians are free, and not one of them is a slave. The Indians do not even use aliens as slaves, and much less one of their own countrymen.... They live frugally and observe very good order. Theft is of very rare occurrence. The simplicity of their laws and their contracts is proved by the fact that they seldom appeal to law. They have no suits about pledges or deposits, nor do they require either seals or witnesses, but make their deposits and confide in each other. They neither put out money at usury or know how to borrow.... Truth and virtue they hold alike in esteem.... In contrast to the general simplicity of their style, they love finery and ornaments. Their robes are worked in gold, adorned with precious stones, and they wear flowered garments of the finest muslin. Attendants walking behind hold umbrellas over them; for they have a high regard for beauty, and avail themselves of every device to improve their looks....

"Of the great officers of state, some have charge of the market, others of the city, others of the soldiers, while some superintend the canals and measure the land, some collect the taxes, and some construct roads and set up pillars to show the by-roads and the distances....

"Those who have charge of the city are divided into six bodies of five each. The first body looks after industrial art. The second attends to the entertainments of strangers, taking care of them, well or ill, and, in the event of their dying, burying them and forwarding their property to their relatives. The third enquires of births and deaths, so that these among both high and low may not escape the cognisance of Government. The fourth deals with trade and commerce, and has charge of weights and measures. The fifth supervises the sale of manufactured articles which are sold by public notice, and the sixth collects the tithe on such articles. There is, beside the city magistrates, a third body, which directs military affairs. One division of this has charge of the infantry, another of the cavalry, a third of the war chariots, a fourth of the elephants; while one division is appointed to co-operate with the admiral of the fleet and another with the superintendent of the bullock trains used for transporting the munitions of war."

So much for the East before it was gripped by the West. With a full-blown War Office, and a statistical registration of births and deaths, it appears to have gone far on the course of our civilisation.

Concerning the "Brahmanes," as the old writers term the Brahmans, Megasthenes says of them that they live in groves, and

"spend their time in listening to sermons, discourses, and in imparting knowledge to such as will listen to them. The hearer is not allowed to speak, or even to cough, and much less to spit, and if he offends in any of these ways, he is cast out from their society that very day, as being a man who is wanting in self-restraint. Death is with them a very frequent subject of discourse. They regard this life as, so to speak, the time when the child within the womb matures, and death as the birth into a new and happy life. They go about naked, saying that God has given the body as sufficient covering for the soul."

One may still hear this teaching given in the mango groves, or in the shade of a banyan tree, throughout this India of the twentieth century.

And it still satisfies the hearers.

THE SESU-NÂGA (and Other) KINGS

B.C. 620 TO B.C. 327

We stand now on the threshold of actual history. Before us lie two thousand five hundred years; and behind us? Who can say? From the far distance come the reverberating thunders of the Mâhâbhârata, still filling the ear with stories of myth and miracle. But the days of these are over. Henceforward, we are to listen to nothing save facts, to believe nothing to which our ordinary everyday experience cannot give its assent.

Who, then, were these Sesu-nâga kings of whom we read in the lists of dead dynasties given in the Purânas--those curious histories of the whole cosmogony of this world and the next, some of which can now be fairly proved to have existed in the very first centuries of our era, and with them an accredited claim to hoar antiquity?

How came these kings by their name Ses, or Shesh-nâga? A name which indubitably points to their connection with the sacred snake, or "nâg."

Were they of Scythic origin? Nothing more likely. Certain it is that Scythic hordes invaded India from the north-east, both during and after the age of the Epics. It is conjectured, also, that they met in conflict with the Aryan invaders from the north-west on the wide, Gangetic plains, possibly close to the junction of the Sone River with the Ganges.

Here, at any rate, lay the ancient kingdom of Magadha, the kingdom of these Ses-nâga kings.

There were ten of these kings, and of the first four, we, as yet, know nothing. But almost every year sees fresh inscriptions deciphered, new coins discovered, and therefore it is not unlikely that some day these mere dry-as-dust names, Sesu-nâga, Sakavârna, Kshema-dhârman, and Kshattru-jâs, may live again as personalities. At present we must be content with imagining them in their palace at Raja-griha, or "The kings abode surrounded by mountains."

It has a curiously distinguished, dignified sound, this description. One can imagine these Ses-nâga princes, their Scythian faces, flat, oblique-eyed, yet aquiline, showing keen under the golden-hooded snake standing uræus-like over their low foreheads, riding up the steep, wide steps leading to their high-perched palaces, on their milk-white steeds; these latter, no doubt, be-bowed with blue ribbons and bedyed with pink feet and tail, after the fashion of processional horses in India even nowadays. Riding up proudly, kings, indeed, of their world, holders of untold wealth in priceless gems and gold--gold, unminted, almost valueless, jewels recklessly strung, like pebbles on a string.

This legend, indeed, of countless uncounted gold, of fair women, and almost weird, rough luxury, lingers still around the very name of Snake-King, and holds its own in the folk-lore of India.

In these days the kingdom of Magadha--so far as we can judge, a Scythic principality--was just entering the lists against that still more ancient Aryan kingdom of Kosâla, of which we read in the Râmâyana. But there were other principalities in the settled country which lay between the extreme north-west of the Punjâb and Ujjain, or Mâlwa. Sixteen such states are enumerated in various literary--chiefly religious--works, which were probably compiled in the fifth century B.C.; but these, again, are mere dry-as-dust names.

The first breath of real life comes with Bimbi-sâra, the fifth Sesu-nâga king. He, we know, conquered and annexed the principality of Anga and built the city of New Rajagrîha, which lies at the base of the hill below the old fort. But something there is in his reign which grips attention more than conquests or buildings. During it, and under his rule, the founders of two great religions gave to the world their solutions of the problem of life. In all probability both Mâhâvîra and Gâutama Buddha were born in Bimbi-sâra's days; certain it is that he must have heard the first teachings of Jainism and Buddhism preached at his palace doors. He is supposed to have reigned for nearly five and twenty years, and then to have retired into private life, leaving his favourite son, Ajâta-sutru, as regent.

And here tragedy sets in; tragedy in which Buddhist tradition avers that Deva-datta, the Great Teacher's first cousin and bitterest enemy, was prime mover. For one of the many crimes imputed to this arch-schismatic by the orthodox, is that he instigated Ajâtasutru to put his father to death.

Whether this be true or not, certain it is that Bimbi-sâra was murdered, and by his son's orders; for in one of the earliest Buddhist manuscripts extant there is an account of the guilty son's confession to the Blessed One (i.e., Buddha) in these words: "Sin overcame me, Lord, weak, and foolish, and wrong that I am, in that for the sake of sovranty I put to death my father, that righteous man, that righteous king."

If, as tradition has it, that death was compassed by slow starvation, the prompt absolution which Buddha is said to have given the royal sinner for this act of atrocity becomes all the more remarkable. His sole comment to the brethren after Ajâta-sutru had departed appears to have been: "This king was deeply affected, he was touched in heart. If he had not put his father to death, then, even as he sate here, the clear eye of truth would have been his."

Apart from this parricidal act, the motive for which he gives with such calm brutality, Ajâta-sutru seems to have been a strong, capable king. He had instantly to face war with Kosâla, the murdered man's wife--who, it is said, died of grief--being sister to the king of that country. Round this war, long and bloody, legend has woven many incidents. At one time Magadha, at another Kosâla, seems to have come uppermost. Ajâta-sutru himself was once carried a prisoner in chains to his opponent's capital; but in the end, when peace came, Kosâla had given one of its princesses in marriage to the King of Magadha, and had become absorbed in that empire.

But this was not enough for ambitious Ajâta-sutru. He now turned his attention to the rich lands north of the Ganges, and carried his victorious arms to the very foot of holy Himalaya.

In the course of this war he built a watch-fort at a village called Patali, on the banks of the Ganges, where in after years he founded a city which, under the name of Patâliputra (the Palibothra of Greek writers), became eventually the capital, not only of Magadha, but of India--India, that is, as it was known in these early days.

Patali is the Sanskrit for the bignonia, or trumpet-flower; we may add, therefore, to our mental picture of the remaining four Ses-nâga kings, that they lived in Trumpet-flower City.

For the rest, these two great monarchs, Bimbi-sâra and Ajâta-sutru, must have been near, if not actual contemporaries of Darius, King of Persia, who founded an Indian satrapy in the Indus valley. This he was able to do, in consequence of the information collected by Skylax of Karyanda, during his memorable voyage by river from the Upper Punjâb to the sea near Karâchi, thus demonstrating the practicability of a passage by water to Persia. All record of this voyage is, unfortunately, lost; but the result of it was the addition to the Persian Empire of so rich a province, that it paid in gold-dust tribute to the treasury, fully one-third of the total revenue from the whole twenty satrapies; that is to say, about one million sterling, which in those days was, of course, an absolutely enormous sum.

There is not much more to tell of Ajâta-sutru; and yet, reading between the lines of the few facts we actually know of him, the man's character shows distinct. Ambitious, not exactly unscrupulous, but uncontrolled. A man who, having murdered his father, could weep over his own act, and seek to obliterate the blood-stain on his hands by confessions and pious acts. When Buddha died, an eighth portion of his bones was claimed by Ajâta-sutru, who erected at Râjgrîha a magnificent tope or mound over the sacred relics.

But, if tradition is to be believed, he handed down the curse of his great crime to his son, his grandson, and his great grandson; for the Ceylon chronicle asserts, that each of these in turn were parricides. It is--to use a colloquialism--a tall order; but assertion or denial are alike unproven.

If it be true, there is some relief in finding that the last of these criminal kings--Mâhâ-nundin by name--was ousted from his throne and killed by his prime minister, one Mâhâ-padma-Nanda, who is said, also, to have been the murdered man's illegitimate son by a Sudra, or low-caste woman.

Whether this latter be true or not, certain it is that about the year B.C. 361, or thereabouts, the reign of the Ses-nâga kings ends abruptly. The dream-vision of the steps of old Râjgrîha with Scythian princelings--parricidal princelings--riding up to their palaces on processional horses, or living luxuriously in Trumpet-flower city, vanishes, and something quite as dream-like takes its place.

For in the oldest chronicles we are told that there were but two generations in the next, or Nanda dynasty--viz.: Mâhâ-padma and his eight sons--yet we are asked to believe that they reigned for one hundred and fifty-nine years!

In truth, these nine Nandas seem in many ways mythical, and yet the very confusion and contradictions which surround their history point to some underlying reason for the palpable distortion of plain fact. They are said to have reigned together, the father and his eight sons. The name of only one of these is known, Sumâ-lya; but when Alexander the Great paused on the banks of the Beâs, in the year B.C. 326, he heard that a king was then reigning at Patâliputra, by name Xandrames (so the Greek tongue reports it), who had an army of over two hundred thousand men, and who was very much disliked, because of his great wickedness and base birth. For he was said to be the son of a barber, and as such, "contemptible and utterly odious to his subjects."

This king must have belonged to the Nanda dynasty, and the story, if it does nothing else, proves that the family was really of low extraction. That it gained the throne by the assassination of a rightful king, is also certain. But revenge was at hand. The tragedy was to be recast, replayed, and in B.C. 321 Chandra-gûpta, the Sandracottus of the Greeks, himself an illegitimate son of the first Nanda, and half-brother, so the tale runs, of the eight younger ones, was, after the usual fashion of the East, to find foundation for his own throne on the dead bodies of his relations.

But some four years ere this came to pass, while young Chandra-gûpta, ambitious, discontented, was still wandering about Northern India almost nameless--for his mother was a Sudra woman--he came in personal contact with a new factor in Indian history. For in March, B.C. 326, Alexander the Great crossed the river Indus, and found himself the first Western who had ever stood on Indian soil. So, ere passing to the events which followed on Chandra-gûpta's rude seizure of the throne of Magadha, another picture claims attention. The picture of the great failure of a great conqueror.

THE ANABASIS

B.C. 326 TO B.C. 320

"Some talk of Alexander...."

Who does not know the context? Who also does not think that he knows who Alexander was, who could not, if necessary, reel off a succinct account of his character, his conquests?

And yet, though most know of his Anabasis, how few have really grasped the picturesque points of his grand sweep on India. Who, for instance, has properly appraised and inwardly digested, until it remains as a living picture in the mind's eye for ever, that quaint thirty days' halt of the Macedonian legions on the western bank of the Indus, while on the eastern lay, ripe for plucking, the rich harvest of the fertile plains of India?

It was not a halt of preparation. Hephaistion had already swung the barges across the tumultuous swirls of the great river, and a bridge, unstable, yet firm, lay ready for use. The cohorts were eager. Taxîles, the Indian king, had sent from the Takhsha, or Snake-City, over the water, half a million of tribute, and an advance guard of seven hundred horsemen and thirty caparisoned elephants. For he was wily, and the Western army would aid him against his hereditary enemy the great Porus, or Puar, a representative, doubtless, of the Râjput tribe of that name, who reigned beyond the next river--the Jhelum.

So there was no real need for this prolonged rest, for this fateful pause, ere the West reached out its hand and gripped the East. Still, Alexander deemed it necessary for the purpose, as Arrian puts it naïvely, of "offering sacrifice to the gods to whom he was in the habit of sacrificing."

Wherefore?

He had conquered many other lands. Whence came this hesitation, this desire for divine guidance? And wherefore did Taxîles, sacrificing to the gods to whom he was not in the habit of sacrificing, send over three thousand oxen and ten thousand sheep as victims?

Who can say? All we know is, that the sacrifices were favourable to the crossing, as they were bound to be since Alexander had made up his mind to it. Whereupon he "celebrated a gymnastic and horse contest near the river"; those who took part in it, doubtless, wearing crowns of the ivy leaves which the Macedonian legions, as Arrian writes, had found at Mount Merus to their great delight, "for they had not seen any for a long time. So they eagerly made garlands of it, singing hymns in honour of Dionysus."

It must have been a pleasant rest, a jolly time, those thirty days of February and March spent by the sliding river. Those of us who know Northern India have memories of many such a sojourn in the enchanted no-man's-land of a Punjâb river-bed, where the soil on which the tent is pitched one year may be deep stream the next, and the great solemn cranes stalk amongst the young green wheat, and the flocks of flamingoes show rosy-red in the sunrises. Bright, bracing memories these, full, as it were, of the wild wings of many quaint aquatic birds, full of the deep spoors of the heavy black buffaloes, and the motionless grey logs of bottle-nosed crocodiles.

Alexander's army, however, had no such mise en scene. At Attock--about which place the bridge must have spanned the Indus--the river rushes between fixed rocky banks; the uneven country is broken by ravines, or, rather, deep clefts, which look as though they had been split open in the barren, undulating valley by the burning summer heat of the sun. And all around, upon a near horizon, rise, curiously opalescent at all times, whether red by day or white by moonlight, a circle of rocky hills. Elusive hills, distant at one moment, seeming to crush in the valley at another.

One can imagine them rose-red in the dawn, when the order came at last, and Alexander the Invincible closed in grips with his new antagonist.

Plain sailing at first, despite the false alarm of the last day's march to Taxîla, when a complete army in order of battle was seen on the horizon, and startled Alexander into instant dispositions for attack, until this display of force was proved to be an Indian form of honourable reception. The Serpent-City, yielded up to him by its willing ruler without a blow, gave occasion "for more sacrifices which were customary for him to offer."

Once again, however, not customary to "Taxîles the Indian," who must have watched this honouring of strange gods with furtive, wily eyes, thinking the while of Porus, with the whole of his mighty army waiting on the further side of the Jhelum River for this upstart Western conqueror as a spider waits a fly.

Here at Taxîla, also, "the king of the Mountaineer-Indians sent envoys, the embassy including the king's brother, as well as the other most notable men." This is one version of the story. Another is that Alexander fought a pitched battle with the mountaineers, defeating them, of course; but this is negatived by Arrian's distinct assertion that when the conqueror moved Jhelum-wards in May, he left behind him only "soldiers who were invalided by sickness."

In those days Taxîla was a University city, one of the largest in the East--rich, luxurious, populous--noted as the principal seat of learning in Northern India. All that is left of it now is some miles of ruins between Hasan-Abdâl and Rawalpindi, and a few copper and silver pieces, more ingots than coins, punched in quaint, rude devices. To Alexander it was a hospitable resting-place, where king vied with conqueror in lavish generosity of mutual gifting. Golden crowns for the Macedonian and all his friends; caparisoned chargers, Persian draperies, banqueting vessels for the king and courtiers.

Pleasant rain fell also, laying the Punjâb dust, and hastening the flower-buds to bursting.

But behind all the policy and the pleasure, like a low, distant thunder cloud, lay Porus, with an army fifty thousand strong, biding his time beyond the river.

He had to be faced; so, early in May, Alexander, his small force augmented by a contingent from Taxîla, arrived on the banks of the Hydaspes. Very different weather now from what it had been in March. The hot winds were blowing, the rocks and sand were all aglow, and in its widening bed, as the Jhelum debauched from the hills, the river, swollen by the melting of Himalayan snows, showed a turbulent flood, separating him from his enemy, who, with all his army and his huge troop of elephants, could be seen lining the opposite shore.

How to cross to him, how to give the invincible Macedonian cavalry time to recover and re-form after a forced passage, was the problem before Alexander.

He set his camp face to face with his enemy's, and sent back for the boats with which he had crossed the Indus. A veritable burning of the bridge behind him in a way; but Alexander never considered defeat.

The easiest plan would no doubt have been to wait comfortably encamped till October chill should have checked the melting of summer snow; but, once again, Alexander considered no delay.

So there ensued what Arrian terms "the stealing of a passage." Day and night long the sentinels of Porus were given no rest. Flotillas of boats went up and down the river, reconnaissance parties were here, there, everywhere, menacing a ford; and all the while it was being spread about that Alexander, baffled, disappointed, was fast making up his mind to wait till winter.

Yet 16 miles upwards, almost among the mountains, behind a wooded island which shut out the view southward, galleys, rafts, skins stuffed with hay, everything needful for a forced passage was secretly being prepared.

Night after night brought a feint of attack. As Arrian writes:--

"The cavalry was led along the bank in various directions, making a clamour and raising the battle cry ... as if they were making all preparations for crossing the river.... When this had occurred frequently ... Porus no longer continued to move about also; but, perceiving his fear had been groundless, he kept his position."

It was not, however, as Arrian calls it, by "marvellous audacity" only, that Alexander finally succeeded in his object. As one reads the minute precautions, the stringent orders, the foresight displayed for every possible complication, one is forced to acknowledge the master mind of the commander. Small wonder if the very heavens fought for him. It was now July, month of torrential rains, fierce storms; and one of these fell suddenly like a pall over Alexander's forced night march of 16 miles--"The noise of the thunder," Arrian writes, "drowned with its din the clatter of the weapons."

Thus, noisily yet secretly, the position was gained by the 11,000 picked troops led by Alexander in person. The storm passed; the dawn rose, calm and bright, to find the Western soldiers across the stream, crashing through the low undergrowth of what their general deemed was the mainland. For it was July now, and the rains had brought that marvellous luxuriance of sudden life which springs ever from the union of sun and water. So we can imagine the well-greaved Greeks brushing aside the low daphne bushes, and crushing under foot the trailing arches of the ground maidenhair fern. To find disappointment await them, as, standing on a further shore, they realised that they were on an island, that before them lay another formidable channel, swollen by the night's rain. For a while the cavalry could find no ford; when found, it was but a swimming one. Yet even so, dripping, half-drowned, the legions were over and deployed in the open, before any attempt at opposition could be made.

So with Alexander at the head, the West did battle for the first time with the East.

The result was foregone. Outnumbered as it was by nearly five to one, Alexander's force was still one of veterans, and Alexander himself the foremost military genius of his own or any age.

The story, then, of the great battle of the Hydaspes remains as a lesson in warfare, and soldiers of to-day may pore over the sketch map of it in admiration. Here, in this attempt to give Indian history in picturesque form, all minor things, the magnificent charges of the Macedonian cavalry, the desperate courage of the Indians, even the awful carnage wrought by the maddened elephants cooped up within narrow space, all these fade into insignificance before the tale--so seldom told as it should be told--of the meeting of Alexander and Porus after the battle was over in the eighth hour of the day. Let it be told in Arrian's own words.

"When Porus, who exhibited great talent in the battle, performing deeds not only of a general, but of a valiant soldier, observed the slaughter of his cavalry ... and that most of his infantry had perished, he did not depart, as Darius the Persian king did, setting an example of flight to his men.... At last, having received a wound ... he turned his elephant round and began to retire.

"Alexander, having seen him valiant in battle, was very desirous of saving his life. Accordingly, he sent to him first Taxîles the Indian, who, riding up ... as near as seemed safe, bade him ... listen to Alexander's message. But when he saw his old foe Taxîles, Porus wheeled and prepared to strike him with a javelin, and would probably have killed him, if he had not quickly driven his horse beyond reach. But not even on this account was Alexander angry ... but kept sending others in succession, and last of all Meroës the Indian ... an old friend of Porus.

"As soon as the latter heard the message of Meroës, and being overcome by thirst from his wound, he dismounted from his elephant. After he had drank water and felt refreshed, he ordered Meroës to lead him without delay to Alexander....

"And Alexander rode in front of the line with a few of the Companions to meet him, and stopping his horse, admired the handsome figure and the stature of Porus, which reached somewhat about 5 cubits (6 ft. 6 in.). He was also surprised that he did not seem to be cowed in spirit, but advanced to meet him as one brave man would meet another brave man.... Then, indeed, Alexander was the first to speak, bidding him say what treatment he would like to receive.

"'Treat me, O Alexander, in a kingly way!'

"Alexander, pleased, said: 'For my own sake, O Porus, I do that, but for thine, do thou demand what is pleasing unto thee.'

"But Porus said all things were included in that, whereupon Alexander, being still more pleased, not only granted him the rule over his own Indians, but also added another country of larger extent than the former to what he had before. Thus he treated the brave man in a kingly way, and from that time found him faithful in all things."

A fine picture this; one which does not readily desert the mind's eye when once it has found place there. And a fine beginning also to the dealings of the West with the East. Pity that in the years to come the same policy was not always adopted.

In commemoration of this victory a town was founded on the battle-field, and another near the present one of Jhelum, in memory of the horse "Bucephalus," who died there full of years and honour; not, as Arrian says,

"from having been wounded by any one, but from the effects of toil and old age; for he was about thirty years old, and quite worn out with toils. He had shared many hardships and incurred many dangers with Alexander, being ridden by none but the King, because he rejected all other riders."

The triumphal progress through the Doabs, which ensued on Alexander's passage of the Hydaspes, was only checked by the stout resistance of Sangâla, a fortified town as yet unidentified. But with the help of a fresh contingent brought by Porus, it was razed to the ground as a punishment for its stubborn and useless resistance.

And now before the conqueror lay the river Beâs; beyond it, a nation by repute brave, well equipped, more civilised than those through which he had passed like a flaming sword. His own courage rose high; to him "there seemed no end of the wars so long as anything hostile to him remained."

But the spirit of the soldiers had begun to flag. It was now September, the most trying month in Upper India. The lassitude born of long heat disposed the men to listen to the tales of gigantic heroes beyond the water, and so the exhortations of their leader fell on deaf ears. Yet, as given by Arrian, the words were stirring beyond compare.

"If they had come so far, why should they shrink from adding further lands to their Empire of Macedonia? To brave men there was no end to labours except the labours themselves, provided they led to glorious achievements. The distance to the Eastern ocean was not great, and that must be united to their own familiar sea, since the Great Waters encircled the earth. If they went back, the races they had conquered, not being as yet firm in allegiance, might revolt. Oh! Macedonian and Grecian Allies stand firm! Glorious are the deeds of those who undergo labours, who live a life of valour, and die, leaving behind them immortal glory."

But the words only provoked a long silence. And so the flaming sword turned back; but the great fighting heart of its holder seems to have been left behind in the old bed of the Beâs River, where, on its furthest bank, as a memorial of what would have happened but for dull humanity, he erected twelve huge altars--

"equal in height to the loftiest military towers, while exceeding them in breadth; to serve both as a thank-offering to the gods who had led him so far as a conqueror, and also to serve as monuments of his own labours. And after completing them, he offered sacrifices on them" (to the gods to whom he was in the habit of sacrificing, doubtless!), "and celebrated a gymnastic and equestrian contest."