Do you honestly believe India (ALL kingdoms combined .... at their peak, united hypothetically) were in the same ballpark as Imperial Persia?
Be honest ....
Cheers, Doc
You overstimate Persia and Underestimate Bharat as your Darius the great, queen SemiRamis of Assyria and Alexander of Macedonia found out, when they went against small Indic kingdoms, forget about Gupta Empire or the Satavahanas etc.
After all these victories, Cyrus turned his attention India wards. Trying to conquer India, Cyrus The Great met his nemesis, at the hands of an army with significant Indian component. The defeat of Cyrus The Great, reverberated in the Western world. A Greek writer, well travelled in Asia and Northern India, Herodotus,
judged it to be be the bloodiest battle he had witnessed. Not even a Persian messenger survived to carry the tale of the battle, and for years his people did not know what had become of Cyrus. (from
Women Warriors By David E. Jones).
In
the battle against the Massaga, resulting in the defeat and
death of Cyrus, against Queen Tomyris, Indian
elephants played a crucial role. After their
defeat at the hands of Tomyris, the Persians (then Zoroastrians) did not use elephants (considered evil by Zoroastrians).
After their defeat at Indian borders, at the hands of the Massagetae, Persians foccussed their expansionary ambitions towards Europe – and Greece in particular, – and stopped looking India wards. Alexander the Great, renamed the site of the Cyrus-Tomyris battle as Alexandria Eschate – which was earlier known as Kurushkhatta (Kurukshetra?) /Kyreschata /Kuruškatha.
Elephants in Indo-Iranian alliance
Achaemenids did not learn their lessons from the death of Cyrus their Great. Possibly, the
outcome against Alexander would have been different, had they used more
elephants at Gaugamela – instead of 12-15. Similarly, a 1000 years later, the Sassanian army, had forgotten their lessons – and could not
use their few elephants to full effect, against the Islamic Arabs.
But, the
Sassanian dynasty was able to wrest backand
defend the Persian dominions from the Greco-Romans, after setting up an elephants corps in their army – evidenced, for instance, by the
carvings at Taq-i-Bustan. At one time, the Sassanian rulers had
increased its elephant corps to 12,000 elephants.
In the character of their warfare, the Persians of the Sassanian period did not greatly differ from the same people under the Achaemenian kings. The principal changes which time had brought about were an almost entire disuse of the war chariot,
[PLATE XLVI. Fig. 3.] and the advance of the elephant corps into a very prominent and important position. Four main arms of the service were recognized, each standing on a different level: viz. the elephants, the horse, the archers, and the ordinary footmen. The elephant corps held the first position. It was recruited from India, but was at no time very numerous. Great store was set by it; and in some of the earlier battles against the Arabs the victory was regarded as gained mainly by this arm of the service.
… The elephant corps was under a special chief, known as the
Zend-hapet, or “Commander of the Indians,” either because the beasts came from that country, or because they were managed by natives of Hindustan. (
from The Seven Great Monarchies of the Ancient Eastern World By George Rawlinson).
A
modernized version of Strabo’s The Geography of Strabo reads,
Alexander …
heard that no one had hitherto passed that way with an army and emerged in safety, except Semiramis, when she fled from India. The natives said that even she emerged with only twenty men of her army; and that Cyrus son of Cambyses, escaped with only seven of his men … When Alexander received this information he is said to have been seized with a desire of excelling Cyrus and Semiramis … What credence can we place in these accounts of India … Megasthenes virtually agrees. (
from Alexander the Great By Ian Worthington – ellipsis mine).
Both Cyrus the Great and Semiramis are the subject of many volumes and books written by the Greeks, Persians, Babylonians tablets, etc.
Alexander in fact is said to be eager to capture India precisely because two earlier conquerors – Semiramis and Cyrus – had failed to do so. Here it is worth noting, Alexander apparently views the legendary Assyrian queen as an historical figure, the equal of Cyrus the Great, and strives to outdo them both. (
from Warrior Women By Deborah Levine Gera).
Alexander’s newly inducted Persian advisors, apart from Greek writers also, would have filled him in, on how a few centuries ago, Semiramis, Queen of Assyria, and Cyrus the Great, two significant historical figures of the Asia and the Levant, had failed against the Indians.
Many of Alexander’s actions, seemingly aimed at patching up alliances with Indian rulers on his borders, to avoid the fate of his predecessor ‘conquerors’ – Cyrus The Great and Semiramis. His pickings in terms of loot were negligible– unlike, say from, Persia.
