The Indian Invasion of Alexander and the Emergence of Hybrid Cultures

Abstract

Alexander the Great usurped the Achaemenid Empire in 331 bc, captured Swat and Punjab in 327 bc, and subdued the region to the west of the Indus and fought with Porus at the Hydaspes in 326 bc. But he was forced to return home when the army refused to proceed. Some of his soldiers remained in India and its periphery while some joined Alexander in his homeward journey. When Alexander died in 323 bc his successors (diodochoi) fought to divide the empire among themselves and established separate kingdoms. Though Alexander the Great and related matters were well expounded by scholars the hybrid communities that emerged or revived as a result of Alexander’s Indian invasions have attracted less or no attention. Accordingly, the present study intends to examine contribution of Alexander’s Indian invasion to the emergence of Greco-Indian hybrid communities in India and how Hellenic or Greek cultural features blended with the Indian culture through numismatic, epigraphic, architectural and any other archaeological evidence. This will also enable us to observe the hybridity that resulted from Alexander’s Indian invasion to understand the reception the Greeks received from the locals and the survival strategies of Greeks in these remote lands.