It was early in the year 326 B.C. that Alexander, fresh from the conquest of the fierce tribes of northern Afghânistân, led his army over into the plains of India by a bridge of boats, with which he had spanned the Indus a little below its junction with the Kabul river.[1] He remained in the country not more than twenty months all told, yet in that brief space he reduced the Panjâb as far as the Satlej, and the whole of the spacious valley of the lower Indus, downwards to the ocean itself. He would even have penetrated to the Ganges had his army consented to follow him, and, in the opinion of Sandrokottos, would have succeeded in adding to his empire the vast regions through which that river flows. The rapidity with which he achieved his actual conquests in the country appears all the more surprising when we take into account that at every stage of his advance he encountered a most determined resistance. The people were not only of a most martial temperament, but were at the same time inured to arms; and had they but been united and led by such a capable commander as Pôros, the Macedonian army was doomed to utter destruction. Alexander, with all his matchless strategy, could not have averted such a catastrophe; for what is the record of his Indian campaigns? We find that the toughest of all his battles was that which he fought on the banks of the Hydaspes against Pôros; that he had hot work in overcoming the resistance of the Kathaians before the walls of Sangala; that he was wounded near to death in his assault upon the Mallian stronghold; and that in the valley of the Indus he could only overpower the opposition instigated by the Brahmans by means of wholesale massacres and executions. It may hence be safely inferred that if Alexander had found India united in arms to withstand his aggression, the star of his good fortune would have culminated with his passage of the Indus. But he found, on the contrary, the political condition of the country when he entered it eminently favourable to his designs. The regions of the Indus and its great tributary streams were then divided into separate states—some under kingly and others under republican governments, but all alike prevented by their mutual jealousies and feuds from acting in concert against a common enemy, and therefore all the more easy to overcome. Alexander, in pursuance of his usual policy, sought to secure the permanence of his Indian conquests by founding cities,[2] which he strongly fortified and garrisoned with large bodies of troops to overawe and hold in subjection the tribes in their neighbourhood. The system of government also which he established was the same as that which he had provided for his other subject provinces, the civil administration being entrusted to native chiefs, while the executive and military authority was wielded by Macedonian officers.