N. Gopala Pillai, M. A
from the Proceedings of the All-India Oriental Conference
Vol. IX (Trivandrum: Government Press, 1937), pp. 955-997
The marvellous exploits of Alexander the Great startled and thrilled the world. East and West vied with each other in paying him divine honours during his life and after his death. Myths and legends woven around him, embroidered with all the glowing colours of imagination spread through the Continents. The lands he conquered and those beyond them told his tales in diverse tongues. Greek and Latin, Syriac and Arabic,[1] Ethiopic, Hebrew, Samaritan, Armenian, Persian, English and French, German and Italian, and even Scandinavian languages of Europe, Asia, and Africa enshrined in prose and verse the immortal romance of the Macedonian Prince. Those were the days when religion held sway over the minds of men. His tolerance of faiths other than his own, his cosmopolitan outlook in matters religious, inspired as it was by a deep vein of mysticism helped him[2] “wherever he went to treat with respect the local religion.” His attitude towards the religion of the Persians, his greatest adversaries, the destruction of their sacred books at Persepolis is one of the rare exceptions to the rule of his general tolerance. The Arabs worshipped him as Iskandar[3] Dhu’lquarnein (two horned Alexander) and even Islam[4] adopted Iskandar among her prophets, and carried his forgotten fame back into India. He was the first Aryan monarch to become a God.[5]
When these various nations with whom he came into contact have preserved various accounts of his life and conquests, have elevated him to the position of a Superman and God, it is strange, if it be a fact, that Ancient Indian Literature alone is oblivious of him. Great scholars and historians have noted this phenomenon of apparent silence.[6] But they are not surprised. Indians are a peculiar race. India ignores and forgets.[7] “It is a conspiracy of silence.” “India remained unchanged. The wounds of battle were quickly healed: the ravaged fields smile again.[8] “No Indian author, Hindu or Jain or Buddhist makes even the faintest allusion to Alexander or his deeds,” asserted V.A. Smith, and he quotes with approval the lines by Matthew Arnold:
Missing illustration: Alexander the Great and Greek Companion cavalry ride into battle to defeat Persian King Darius at the Battle of Issus, 333 B.C. Alexander established a huge empire across much of the known world before his early death in 323 B.C.
“The East bowed low before the blast
In patient, deep disdain,
She let the legions thunder past,
And plunged in thought again.”
It is a peculiar theory which holds that man in the East is radically different from members of his species in the West. His skin may be dark or brown, but his normal reactions to external stimuli cannot be different from those of his fellow beings elsewhere. The sun might shine brighter on him and the hues of land and sky might be more beautiful around him; but the fundamentals of human psychology remain true everywhere. And the vaunted greatness of historians and scholars cannot repudiate the patent facts of the character of ‘Homo Sapiens’.
If the Indian mind does not materially differ in fundamental facts, the question naturally arises “Are there allusions or references in Indian Literature to the conquest of Alexander, and if so, what?”
This paper is an attempt to trace those references that lie scattered over the vast range of Indian Literature.
In Persian and Arabic and in Eastern languages generally, it is a well-known fact that Alexander is known under the name of Iskandar. And it is natural, if Indian languages have used his name, it might be a variant of its Asiatic form. What form could it normally assume in the ancient Sanskrit language? We are familiar, through Buddhist sources with the Indianization of the name of the Graeco-Bactrian King, Menander.[9] It occurs as Melinda. On the same analogy, Iskander regularly becomes ‘Iskanda.’ It is next an easy step to treat the initial ‘I’ as a case of prosthesis[10] as it obtains regularly in Prakrits, and arrive at the Sanskrit form ‘Skanda’. But a suspicion might lurk whether it is not a case of philological legerdemain. The name of Skanda is familiar in Sanskrit, in Indian languages and literature in general. But has it anything to do with Alexander the Great? Is it not an isolated case of accidental coincidence? It behoves us to examine it further.
If there are historical facts of the life and deeds of Alexander analogous to those of Skanda as we gather from the Indian literature and if there is corroboration of material details in the lives of [people?], we have to pause before we reject the hypothesis as idle, far-fetched fantasy.
At the outset, it must be borne in mind that many long centuries have sped since the days of Alexander of Macedon. A tangled mass of myths have grown around his name and eclipsed his true history. The folk-lore of centuries embodying the exploits of local heroes lies entwined over the garbled tales of Alexander, often distorting them beyond recognition. The life of Alexander by a Pseudo-Callisthenes gained unmerited currency and the brilliant hues of lurid fiction threw facts into the shade. We have, then, to extricate historical matter from the cobwebs of age-old legends.
Alexander was a prince, and Kumāra, which means a prince in Sanskrit, is a synonym of ‘Skanda.’ He was a warlord and leader of an army, and Senānī which means the leader of an army is again a name of Skanda. The lance was Alexander’s favourite weapon, and the weapon of Greek soldiers in general, and Skanda is called ‘Śakti-dhara’ (lance bearer). These are resemblances which may gain weight in the light of other evidences.
The fondest hope and proudest ambition of Philip of Macedon, Alexander’s father was to lead a Crusade against Persia after achieving a Pan-Hellenic Confederation. The memories of the incursion of the barbarian hordes from Persia who devastated the smiling lands of Greece and subjugated her inhabitants, were still there in the minds of men. But Philip did not live long enough to see the fructification of his hopes. It was left to his son Alexander to fulfil the dreams of his father. The conquest of Persia and the establishment of a World Empire under Hellenic supremacy was his greatest ambition. The defeat of Darius was perhaps the greatest event of his life. And Skanda was born for the slaying of Tāraka, the asura, who menaced the peace of the world. Now Tāraka is but the sanskritization of Darius[11] ‘Dāra’ of Eastern legends (Dārayavus of the Persian Inscriptions).[12] Darius in Persian means preserver or protector, and Tāraka in Sanskrit also means preserver or protector. There is at once the similitude of sound and sense. Against the advice[13] of Parmenion, Alexander fired Xerxes’s palace at Persepolis as a sign to all Asia that Achaemenid rule had ended. And with the death of Darius and the complete conquest of Persia, Ahura Mazda, the God of Persia was naturally dethroned, and there appeared in his stead the new Aryan God from the West, Alexander. The sway of Ahura Mazda waned with the vanquishing of Achaemenid power. Alexander could legitimately be spoken of as having crushed Ahura Mazda, the guardian deity of the King of Persia. Skanda is referred to as Mahişāsuramardana. Now Mahişāsura appears to be the natural sanskritized form of Mazda-Ahura. In the oldest portions of the Avesta, this compound word does not occur in the form of Ahura Mazda.[14] It is Mazda Ahura. But the Sanskrit form is a much-disputed point. Various scholars of repute have essayed at length to arrive at the Sanskrit equivalent of Ahura Mazda. That Asura is the Sanskrit equivalent of Ah ura is admitted by all. But controversy crops up, when we come to the equivalent of Mazda.
Dr D.B. Spooner connects it with Maya (Zoroastrian period of Indian History, T.R.A.S. 1915, p. 63-89). The regular Indian equivalent according to the Indologist Dr. Thomas and philologists like Dr. Brugmann (T.R.A.S 1915, p. 78) is ‘medha’. On the strength of a passage in the Rig Veda “Mahas putrāso asurasya vīrāh” (Rg. 10.10-12), it is pointed out that Mazda corresponds to Mahas – I venture to suggest that the Mahişāsura of the Puranas is but a Sanskrit rendering of the Mazda Ahura of the Persian, Mahişa being equivalent to Mazda.
But even in the Vedas, the word Mahişa is used in the sense of the great or the venerable. The Uņādi sūtras derive it by affixing ‘ţişac’ to mah, (avimahyoş ţişac – Unl.48). Jñānendra Sarasvati explains Mahişa as Mahān and quotes ‘turīyam dhāma mahişo vivakti’ ‘uta mātā mahişam anvavenat’[15] in support of his view; and Maz is admittedly the Avestic equivalent of Sanskrit ‘Mah’. Compare also the feminine form Mahişī which means a queen. The word Asura which originally possessed a good signification came to acquire a bad import, probably after the rift between the Persians and the Indo-Aryans.