Harking back: Tracing heroics of Porus, our first freedom fighter

Yesterday (Saturday) the amazing Ajoka Theatre of Lahore staged a reading of a translation of the play ‘Porus’ by the well-known French playwright Jean Racine. It concentrates on the Battle of Hydaspes – the River Jhelum – in which the victor is now a contested matter.

You might be wondering just what has Alexander and Porus have to do with the ancient history of Lahore. The connections are direct and multiple. Quite a few years ago we took a look at this path. Since then a lot of research has added to the subject. The Jean Racine readings set off my appetite to delve into the subject again. The very name Porus as used in old manuscripts is a corruption of the word ‘Puru’, or more correctly the Sanskrit ‘Purushikta’. Just why we name our children Sikander after a non-Muslim invader leaves one wondering. The word Porus is not used for it means ‘the ruler’. Many years ago my friend Tipu Almakky planted this query in my mind, but in this ‘hyper piety’ age this matter is left alone.

For starters after the battle Alexander was asked by the Puru of Bhera that he should use his troops to conquer the kingdom of Lahore and beyond for him. So it was that Alexander and his small remaining army bypassed Lahore and given that the Puru of Lahore, who was related to other similar rulers to the east, decided to withdraw beyond Sutlej. Plutarch, the Greek historian, tells us that when the decimated and once defeated army of Alexander saw across the river a massive joint army of the six ‘purus’ numbering 200,000 foot soldiers, nearly 80,000 horsemen, with 6,000 battle elephants and 8,000 chariots with archers, they were shocked. It was clear that this would be the last battle of Alexander, who paraded himself as the ‘Conqueror of the World’.

Here Plutarch says that Alexander was not only battle fatigued but clearly saw that this massive formation would in a matter of a few hours decimate them. The Nandas of Magadh was anyway fabled as having the world’s largest and most powerful army, and their Puru was leading this huge formation. “For as far as the eye could see and much beyond, the joint armies of the ‘purus’ awaited”, he wrote. Just why did the Puru (Porus) of Bhera want to conquer Lahore? That is the central question.

Here it must be kept in mind that all the rulers of the smaller States were directly, or indirectly related. Details of these connections can be read in Irfan Habib and Vivekanand Jha’s classic ‘Mauruan India’. This is also mentioned in Romila Thapar’s classic ‘Asoka’. But the reason clearly given is in Eugene Borza’s investigative classic ‘Alexander’.

The strategic withdrawal of the ruler of Lahore to across the Sutlej is clearly a co-operative strategy because if Lahore fell and Alexander and the Puru of Bhera reorganised, surely it was a matter of time that one by one they would suffer. Hence a collective show of strength was the only option, even though they remained rivals in normal times. That made it clear to Alexander that this would be his last and final battle. Even his generals, what to speak of his soldiers, were beginning to desert. That is when a ‘Return Home’ call was given, and all the Greek soldiers cheered.

It must go to the credit of the Puru of Bhera that in order to protect Alexander from being murdered by his own army, he sent along a small garrison of Rajputs from the Dutt tribe. Till this day Rajputs respect their opposition, but fight among themselves like anything. These Dutt soldiers were later called ‘Muhammadi Brahmins’. Their story we have already described, being that much later they settled inside Lahore Walled City. The Indian acting Dutt family are the direct descendants of those great men.

Sadly, in the end it was a Greek general Eudemus who murdered Porus. So we have before us an amazing rewriting of the history of ‘Porus’ and Alexander. Increasingly new interpretations of the work of Plutarch, Herodotus and others are coming forth. Recent scholarship of Nawotka and R.K. Simha clearly show Alexander as the defeated party, not the way the world sees him.

As my interest is in researching the history of Lahore, it is sad that our school textbooks continue to show Alexander as the great conqueror, not the invader who the various rulers of the Punjab crushed and then sent home a defeated man. It is in a way disgraceful that we refuse to praise our ancient people. In an earlier column I had mentioned a book by Budapest’s Akademiai Kiado which clearly follows the line we have taken in this column.

Just why would Alexander want to conquer the Punjab and reach its capital Lahore? It seems that the Iranian invader Darius had earlier taken away a lot of gold and slaves from this region. The lands of Gandhara in those days was fabled as being the richest on earth. Like all invaders, irrespective of their beliefs, Alexander was also a looter. His scholars surely must have mentioned the greatness of Panini and Kautilya. Added to this the stories from the Punjabi soldiers used by the earlier Achaemenid rulers to invade Greece itself, would have added to the lure.

But when he crossed the Hindukush in 326 BC and faced the fierce soldiers of Waziristan, Swat, Buner and Peshawar, he was told, so Plutarch mentions, that when you cross “the Sindhu River the opposite shore cannot be seen, there men of steel live, so beware”. The resistance just became fiercer as he progressed. In a way his ‘Waterloo’ was at the Battle of the Hydaspes. A wise Porus used Alexander to weaken his rivals. That is the new line of research opening up all over the world.

But there is one fact that we never talk about, and that is that Ambhi, the ruler of Taxila, had joined the forces of Alexander on the condition that the area ruled by Porus be given to him. This fact is taken up by a lot of researchers who point out that as Alexander was defeated, that promise was just not possible. In the same manner Porus wanted Alexander to conquer Lahore for him. The crafty Greek, given the massive forces before him, bypassed Lahore and headed home.

As Alexander headed southwards along the Indus, at Sangala a fierce cavalry attack by the local ruler decimated his cavalry. “Dead horses lay all around”, writes Plutarch. So basically a foot force was left. At Multan the superb archers pierced the breastplate of Alexander, wounding him in the ribs. The UK’s ‘Military History’ magazine of December 1997 mentions that after that “his lung tissue never fully recovered, and the thick scarring in its place made every breath cut like a knife”.

The magazine puts it quite well when it says that Alexander, now defeated and fleeing, never recovered and died in Babylon, Iraq, at the age of 33. His body was taken by a general to Alexandra. There again the body was stolen. Where the man who wisely avoided Lahore is buried remains a mystery.

So it is wise of Shahid Mahmood Nadeem of Ajoka Theatre to take up the mission of researching ‘Porus the Great’. He said on the reading: “For us in Punjab and South Asia, Porus is a heroic figure of resistance to Western invaders and the first and foremost legendary freedom fighter”. Other plays by Ajoka were `Dara`, `Kabir`, `Bulha` `Raja Rasalu` and `Bhagat Singh` have highlighted the real heroes of our land, not the foreigners worshipped by our pious rulers.