Raja = King not warlord.
Chandragupt Maurya the Emperor of Patliputra (now Patna) had an army much bigger than Porus'
Alexander The Great's Battle at the River Jhelum
31–40 of 46 posts
Re: Alexander The Great's Battle at the River Jhelum
#32The king name is "Purushottam" not "Porus".
Names don't normally survive intact when crossing languages; even more so when crossing multiple languages (original -> Greek -> Latin -> English).
Examples from Wikipedia:
- The Greek name for Alexander is Alexandros (Ἀλέξανδρος).
- The Persian name for Alexander is Iskandar (اسکندر).
- Porus is a similarly Latinized version of the Greek version (Πῶρος) of the Sanskrit name Purushottam (पुरुषोत्तम).
Re: Alexander The Great's Battle at the River Jhelum
#33The author is missing some other things that alexandar's men would not have seen on their journey from greece to india.
[1] crocodiles [2] tigers [3] monkeys [4] venomous snakes ( this is a major problem for moving at night) [5] mosquitoes [6] diseases ( with so much life, comes diseases )
He says alexandar would have won the war easily if he had attacked two months earlier. He had no idea about the heat in april and march. His horses don't stand a chance in the punjab heat. They would have lost more easily if they went two months earlier.
Alexander was accustomed to fight in temperate regions and deserts, where horses are very effective. Where as india is either tropical or sub-tropical, where horses don't do very well. What was once his weapon, has become his weakness.
Re: Alexander The Great's Battle at the River Jhelum
#34Bizarre posting. This appears to be a high-school page (authored either by very-good students or not-so-good teachers) and last updated, according to the page, in 2000! I lean towards thinking this is a student project since some of the other articles on this site aren't very well researched. However, this would have been a fairly spiffy result from a group of students in 2000!
But... Why post this? I am not sure I understand.
Re: Alexander The Great's Battle at the River Jhelum
#35The king name is "Purushottam" not "Porus".
Names don't normally survive intact when crossing languages; even more so when crossing multiple languages (original -> Greek -> Latin -> English). Examples from Wikipedia: - The Greek name for Alexander is Alexandros (Ἀλέξανδρος). - The Persian name for Alexander is Iskandar (اسکندر). - Porus is a similarly Latinized version of the Greek version (Πῶρος) of the Sanskrit name Purushottam (पुरुषोत्तम).
Yes, its interesting to trace the routes of these words. The Persian word for Alexander is also Sikander and it was quite a popular name among sultans in medieval India.
And my favorite: Tsar was derived from Caesar :)
Re: Alexander The Great's Battle at the River Jhelum
#36> 50,000 Infantry How verifiable are these numbers? This seems like an awfully large army, given the context. To put this in some perspective, that's about the size of the army Hannibal entered Gaul with in the second punic war [1]. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Punic_War
This number is vastly exaggerated. Porus was small king of a minor principality( modern day equivalent of a district).
References:
Ancient India : By R C Majumdar,
Wonder That Was India : By A.L.Basham.
I have only hard copy of these books. I don't know if e-book is available or not.
Re: Alexander The Great's Battle at the River Jhelum
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's a reasonable army for the time period. I don't know how historians make their estimates but often these are just estimates. Many armies in the time period have 30-50-80K men. In Medieval times getting an army of 20K was a huge deal, most armies were 10K. Different economics, populations, fighting styles, time periods. They probably estimate army size by time period sometimes.
Why was it easier to field large armies in Alexander's time than in the medieval period? Does it have anything to do with the feudal system? Or was it that weapons, armor, and equipment was more expensive in the medieval times. Last guess: training was more valuable in the medieval times than it was earlier, so it was more effective to field smaller armies of better trained and equipped men than a horde of untrained…
In Medieval Europe the King was not that important figure and some Kings had to make agreements so that the nobles with their armies would not leave the battle if they did not like it. A very good analysis in a book by Barbara Tuchman of the "Guns of August" fame is in another of her books. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Distant_Mirror
Re: Alexander The Great's Battle at the River Jhelum
#38> 50,000 Infantry How verifiable are these numbers? This seems like an awfully large army, given the context. To put this in some perspective, that's about the size of the army Hannibal entered Gaul with in the second punic war [1]. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Punic_War
These number are not verifiable but they are not they are not the army you would think it is. Most of Alexander's army was disbanded after he took the 4 main persian cities and was later using local armies with Macedonian Genarals.
Re: Alexander The Great's Battle at the River Jhelum
#39The king name is "Purushottam" not "Porus".
Names don't normally survive intact when crossing languages; even more so when crossing multiple languages (original -> Greek -> Latin -> English). Examples from Wikipedia: - The Greek name for Alexander is Alexandros (Ἀλέξανδρος). - The Persian name for Alexander is Iskandar (اسکندر). - Porus is a similarly Latinized version of the Greek version (Πῶρος) of the Sanskrit name Purushottam (पुरुषोत्तम).
The Greeks made very little effort to retain the phonetics of the original language. This is not a criticism of course, merely an observation, and perhaps partly driven by the impossibility of rendering certain sounds (eg "sh") in
Greek. compare the Greek and native names of the various Egyptian gods for extreme examples.
Re: Alexander The Great's Battle at the River Jhelum
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
Names don't normally survive intact when crossing languages; even more so when crossing multiple languages (original -> Greek -> Latin -> English). Examples from Wikipedia: - The Greek name for Alexander is Alexandros (Ἀλέξανδρος). - The Persian name for Alexander is Iskandar (اسکندر). - Porus is a similarly Latinized version of the Greek version (Πῶρος) of the Sanskrit name Purushottam (पुरुषोत्तम).
Yes, its interesting to trace the routes of these words. The Persian word for Alexander is also Sikander and it was quite a popular name among sultans in medieval India. And my favorite: Tsar was derived from Caesar :)
And the scandinavian word "kejser/keisare", which meaning is equivalent to the English "emperor" (As in "Holy roman emperor")