rge and unwieldy Indian army by a small, but mobile and
well-led, European force. Having defeated Poros, Alexander crossed the
Chenab (Akesines), stormed Sangala, a fort of the Kathaioi on the upper
Ravi (Hydraotes) and advanced as far as the Bias (Hyphasis). But the
weary soldiers insisted that this should be the bourn of their eastward
march, and, after setting up twelve stone altars on the farther side,
Alexander in September, 326 B.C., reluctantly turned back. Before he
left the Panjab he had hard fighting with the Malloi on the lower Ravi,
and was nearly killed in the storm of one of their forts. Alexander
intended that his conquests should be permanent, and made careful
arrangements for their administration. But his death in June, 323 B.C.,
put an end to Greek rule in India. Chandra Gupta Maurya expelled the
Macedonian garrisons, and some twenty years later Seleukos Nicator had
to cede to him Afghanistan.

~Maurya Dominion and Empire of Asoka, 323-231 B.C.~--Chandra Gupta is
the Sandrakottos, to whose capital at Pataliputra (Patna) Seleukos sent
Megasthenes in 303 B.C. The Greek ambassador was a diligent and truthful
observer, and his notes give a picture of a civilized and complex system
of administration. If Chandra Gupta was the David, his grandson,
Asoka, was the Solomon of the first Hindu Empire. His long reign,
lasting from 273 to 231 B.C., was with one exception a period of
profound peace deliberately maintained by an emperor who, after his
conversion to the teaching of Gautama Buddha, thought war a sin.
Asoka strove to lead his people into the right path by means of pithy
abstracts of the moral law of his master graven on rocks and pillars. It
is curious to remember that this missionary king was peacefully ruling a
great empire in India during the twenty-four years of the struggle
between Rome and Carthage, which we call the first Punic War. Of the
four Viceroys who governed the outlying provinces of the empire one had
his headquarters at Taxila. One of the rock edicts is at Mansehra in
Hazara and another at Shahbazgarhi in Peshawar. From this time and for
many centuries the dominant religion in the Panjab was Buddhism, but the
religion of the villages may then have been as remote from the State
creed as it is to-day from orthodox Brahmanism.

~Graeco-Bactrian and Graeco-Parthian Rule.~--The Panjab slipped from the
feeble grasp of Asoka's successors, and for four centuries it looked
not to the Ganges, but