The death of Alexander the Great - the untold part of history.
Why I wrote the book, “The Murder of Alexander the Great.”
According to George Orwell, "four great motives for writing" are: egoism or self-promotion, aesthetics of the rhythm of a good story, the impulse to find true facts, and a political "desire to push the world in a certain direction." Apparently, earning money is not one of the primary motivations. You may be a good writer if you tend to write on a daily basis, but most of us are not habitual writers. Engaged as a busy business executive, I could find little time for writing, though I had been doing some research on Alexander the Great for a number of years. My curiosity on the topic was a result of my close association as a native of an ancient Roman settlement called Muziris in South India. In 1 c BC, Muziris was a Roman settlement with a fort and and a marine emporia, at the farthest corner of the ancient Roman empire.
A decade ago, archaeologists had identified a place near my hometown as the location of the long-lost Roman trading fort called Muziris. It was on the south-western part of the Indian coast, on the Malabar coast on the Arabian sea. My curiosity to dig into its was then inspired by my hometown’s unknown history. But unfortunately nothing was available to shed light on the ancient past of the once famous port settlement, where it was recorded that hundreds of Roman ships came to trade in those days for exotic spices like pepper. According to Greek historian Strabo (II.5.12.): "as many as one hundred and twenty vessels were sailing from Myos Hormos [in Egptian Redsea] to the subcontinent, whereas formerly, under the Ptolemies, only a very few ventured to undertake the voyage and to carry on traffic in Indian merchandise." However, the men and masonry had simply disappeared in time, probably with recurring floods caused by the tropical rains.
The attempts to trace the history of Muziris have not been successful, as little physical evidence in the way of ruins and remains could be found. Archaeologists have recently unearthed hordes of Roman coins and many artifacts from the ancient port of Muziris, proving its antiquity since the first century BC. Researchers however confirm that it was a Roman military settlement long before the middle ages, which provides a leading clue to its connection with Alexander the Great.
As there was scarcely any material archaeological remains to tell the story of Muziris, I tried to probe into alternate sources of hidden history, such as its myths and folk lore. The alternative source of historical information of any place is the local myths and legends of the past, kept in the collective memory of the inhabitants. Understandably, all myths are folktales related to the past, and are a precious heritage bestowed by our ancestors. Myths are also the distorted accounts of historical events; if we look deeper into the folklore of the region, we may get some trace of the Roman roots of Muziris.
Myths provide many ways of looking at the past, and these oral traditions may provide clues to the forgotten history of a place. It was thus interesting to find that during the local annual festival of Muziris, known as Onam, the legends of an ancient emperor who came to invade India in antiquity circulate in Muziris every year.
According to the Onam myth, once upon a time, the great emperor Mahabali came on a global conquest and ruled Muziris. Muziris was then a Utopian world, with an egalitarian society, ruled by the “philosopher king” Mahabali. According to local legends, during the two-week-long festival of Onam, the Asura emperor Mahabali visits Muziris and the people of Muziris spread flowerbeds to welcome him home.
The story is repeated in the 18 Sanskrit Puranas and the epic Mahabharatha. The Sanskrit word Purana literally means “ancient history.” Puranas, according to Vedic scholars, formed a class of texts considered itihasa or “sacrosanct history.” In this tradition, the Mahabharatha, Vamana Purana, Bhagavata Purana, and the Skanda Purana tell us the history of Mahabali and the untold story of Alexander the Great.
It was indeed this personal belief that led me to track the global conquests of Alexander the Great in the 4th century BC and try to find out if there was any connection to the Onam myth and Muziris. His adventurous exploits had led him to the extreme corners of the ancient world, as he conquered most of the known world on three continents.
No Greek traveller had visited Indian subcontinent before Alexander, who crossed the Hindu Kush Mountains in 326 BC and descended into the Indus valley. At the low end of the hazardous mountain gorge was the famous city of Taxila (Takshashila near modern Islamabad) from where the Puranas and the sacred history of India had originated. The Mahabharata epic says Sage Vaisampayana had initially recited the Mahabharata story at King Janamejaya’s snake-sacrifice at Taxila. Further it says, “After concluding the recital, king Janamejaya came back from Takshasila to the city named Hastinapura. (Mahabharata, 18: Svargarohanika Parva.) Alexander too had commenced his Indian conquests from Taxila. Thus the legends of both the Asura emperor Mahabali and the Greek conqueror Alexander started from Taxila.
Eager to change the world order, Alexander led the largest invasion into India, which predictably resulted in an epic conflict between the Asura army led by Alexander and the Aryan tribes in the Indus valley. India was a new domain, fertile and fabulously rich, and yet until then the region was unknown to the Greeks. No Greek, including Alexander, had ever heard of the Indus River or its people. Consequently, when Alexander saw crocodiles in the Indian rivers, he had written to his mother he had discovered the sources of the Egyptian Nile River in India. Alexander had expected to find the great ocean circling the flat earth beyond the Hindukush mountains on the eastern border of Persia. But instead he was surprised to find a gorgeous new world stretching far beyond what he could imagine.
The fact that Alexander was worshipped as a divine being is well known. The image of Alexander as a deified and invincible king of the World is a focal point in our story. Before he descended into the Indus valley from the Hindu Kush Mountains, he had declared himself as the son of the Greek god Zeus and was also crowned at the Arbela temple in Persia as the king of the World and the King of the Asuras (Asuras are the people of Assyria in Persia).
To the pastoral people of the Indus, the golden-haired aliens, who marched in full military gear, clad in metal helmets and breastplates, must have appeared like shiny celestial beings. Their glittering metallic armor and broad bronze shields, rarely seen in India, looked frightening and dangerous. Diodorus, a Greek historian, describes the terrible intensity of the Indian invasion. “At one and the same time much country was wasted, so that every spot was filled with fire, devastation, and great slaughter.” Likewise, when the invading army of the Asura King Mahabali approached the realms of India, one of the Puranic texts, the Bhagavatha Purana, declared “The invading army appeared as if they would destroy the universe and burn everything with their fierce stares.” The story of their terrifying conquests thus became part of ancient myths and the legends in the Sanskrit Puranas.
This was an epic invasion, which slowly morphed into the myths of the Asura king Mahabali in the Puranas. It now appears that the Puranas have morphed Alexander, the alien conqueror, as the king of the demons, Mahabali, capable of conquering the earth, heaven, and hell. The Onam myth recounts this fascinating story. The Onam myth is exclusive to the Muziris region, as it is not heard of in the other parts of India.
The earliest written record of the Onam celebrations is found in the Madurai-Kanchi poem (lines 590-599, “māyōṉ mēya ōṇam nal nāḷ”), which describes the festival being religiously celebrated in the second century AD. This verse confirms that the Onam myth was in circulation in the ancient world, about 500 years after Alexander’s whirlwind invasion of India in 326 BC. Every year during this cult festival, the people of Muziris tell their children the fascinating story of the great emperor, Mahabali, who invaded India in the prehistoric past.
Historians confirm Muziris was originally a Roman settlement on the Malabar Coast, famous from the times of Queen Cleopatra of Egypt in the first century BC, who used to send her ships to this port for its exotic spices and exceptional gems. Could the Roman settlement in Muziris be the cradle of the Onam myth, in which the Emperor of the world Mahabali ruled? We find no epigraphic or literary references leading to the events that led to the myth, except that a Roman port once existed in Muziris. As myths endure long after metal and masonry disappear, the rituals of Onam continue to tell us some of the cult features from the past.
What I found fascinating in the Onam myth was that the route taken by Alexander and the battles he waged in India were similar to the conquests of Mahabali as described in the Puranas.
The Onam myth can be summarised as follows: There was an ‘Asura’ emperor, Mahabali, who had conquered the rest of the world and then reached the borders of the Indus River. He was conducting a religious sacrifice on an Altar in Kurukshetra (Punjab, India) before invading Indraprastha (Delhi). A sadhu Brahman, Vamana, suddenly appeared on the sacrificial altar, as if by divine intervention, and Mahabali surrendered his domains to Vamana. That stopped the invincible emperor from his military campaign on Indraprastha (Delhi.) Thereafter both proceeded to Patala, in the nether world.
The place names in these puranic texts and the marching route taken by Alexander and Mahabali seems to be identical.
The Vamana Purana (63.1.32, 65.4.) also provides the exact geographical location of the sacrificial altar on which Mahabali surrendered his domains to Vamana: “Mahabali desirous of performing a Yajna sacrifice went to Kurukshetra. Thereafter, when Lord Vamana reached Kurukshetra, the whole earth started shaking violently and high tides rose in the ocean.” Kurukshetra is a region in Punjab where Alexander stopped his conquest of India after an altar sacrifice in 326 BC. This seemed to be a direct link between Mahabali and Alexander.
The Skanda Purana, (7.2.16.) says that Lord Vamana cunningly subdued Mahabali on the altar in Kurukshetra and then took him to Patala in the Saurashtra-desa, near Vastra-patha. Alexnader also followed the same route along the Indus river to Saurashtra region and Patala at the mouth of the Indus River. The military campaign for both Mahabali and Alexander ended at Patala (Kutch region in Gujarat.)
An important clue exists in these verses, which leads us to assume that the incident might be an authentic one. The locations Saurashtra-desa, Vastra-patha, Patala and Kurukshetra are identifiable geographical locations, as they help us to prove that the myth had tracked the road taken by Alexander to reach Patala, a mystic city, at the southern edge of the ancient world.
Alexander reached Patala at the time of the rising of the Dog Star, during the rainy season in July 325 BC. (Strabo, 15.1.17). The Greek historian Strabo (Geography, 11.11) wrote, “The Greeks took possession, not only of Patala, but also, on the rest of the coast, what is called the kingdom of Saraostus [Saurashtra] and Sigerdis.” Patala was a mystic realm, mysterious even to the Indians.
The discovery that Patala was the capital of both Mahabali and Alexander was a turning point in the history of Alexander the Great. My anxiety to find whether Alexander was the King of the Asuras, like Mahabali, was overwhelming. How could Alexander be depicted in a myth as the king of the Asuras? In the Sanskrit texts, the word asura generally describes the demonic forces who were continuously in conflict with the Aryan tribes of India. According to tradition, Mahabali always led several tribes of Asura warriors, identified in the Puranas by names such as Daitya, Danava, Asura, Parsus, Gandharva, and Kinnara.
According to scholars, the people of Assyria, who lived in the western part of the Babylonian empire, were always known as the Asuras because they worshipped the primordial god Assur or Azura Mazda. Historically, Asura is a Persian word that means “lord.” In 331 BC, to challenge the Persian emperor Darius camping at Arbela, Alexander invaded Assyria. At the battle of Gaugamela near Arbela, Alexander destroyed the powers of the great Persian emperor decisively. Arbela, in the northern Mesopotamian plains, was one of the capitals of the Assyrian kingdom, and perhaps one of the most important religious centers of the Asura realms.
In the temple at Arbela, after a coronation ceremony led by the local priests, the Greek army proclaimed Alexander as the king of the World. Apparently, in the morning on October 2, 331 BC, very important religious investitures and sacred sacrifices had taken place at the Arbela Temple which changed the history of the world forever. Significantly, at Arbela, he thus became the ruler of the famous Assyrian empire and recruited 30000 Asura warriors to follow him to India.
Inscribed clay tablets (with Cuneiform texts) preserved in the famous temple of Assur confirm that the rulers of Assyria were traditionally designated an “Asura, the steward of god Azura.” By this tradition, the king had his name prefixed with the honorable epithet “Asura.”
Various kings named in these Assyrian inscriptions are designated as Asuras: Asura Banipal, Asura Ballit, Asura Dan, Asura Belkala, Asura Rashishi, and Asura Nasirpal. Apparently, at Arbela, Alexander was now designated as the king of the “Asuras.” [Names of some of the Assyrian kings: Asura-Nirari (1019–1013 BC), Asura-Rabi (1013–972 BC), and Ashur-Reshishi (972–967 BC). [1]Jacques Glassner (2004), Mesopotamian Chronicles, text CM 14, Atlanta.
In India’s largest and foremost oral tradition, the Mahabharata epic of Vyasa, the Asuras are referred to 249 times. One of these famous legends describes the “Asura invasion” of India, led by the mythological emperor Mahabali in the days of yore, which is also a dominating theme in all the Sanskrit Puranas.
This unusual title as the king of the Asuras directly connects Alexander to Indian mythology, as the Puranas are replete with the legends of the Asura clans and the Asura Raja who invaded India in the distant past. Some of the most enchanting myths in the Puranas are exciting allegorical versions of the history of the Indian invasion by the Asura warriors led by Asura Raja Mahabali. (Mahabali was also known as Baliraj, Bali, Asura Raja, King of Danavas and King of Daityas.) Through these everlasting myths, the eighteen Sanskrit Puranas recount the story of Alexander the Great as the king of the Asuras.
This was an exciting finding. And the idea of writing a book came into being, though it took a decade of further research to get all the answers. This was only the first in the pieces of evidence that link Alexander to Mahabali. Further, there were additionally 88 new findings in the 2 books that tells the untold story of Alexander the Great.
This book, in two parts, tells us how Alexander died, and of the impact his life and his death had on the ancient world and its evolution. The Murder of Alexander the Great: Book 1—The Puranas details the story of Alexander until he was forced to retreat from India through the Gedrosian Desert to Babylon. The second volume, The Murder of Alexander the Great: Book 2—The Secret War, reveals the secret Indian strategy that led to the submission and subsequent murder of Alexander.
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