Such conquests have value in this world and in the next.
[Illustration: My companions and I pose before the "dream in marble,"
the Taj Mahal at Agra.--see taj.jpg]
Asoka was a grandson of the formidable Chandragupta Maurya (known
to the Greeks as Sandrocottus), who in his youth had met Alexander
the Great. Later Chandragupta destroyed the Macedonian garrisons
left in India, defeated the invading Greek army of Seleucus in the
Punjab, and then received at his Patna court the Hellenic ambassador
Megasthenes.
Intensely interesting stories have been minutely recorded by Greek
historians and others who accompanied or followed after Alexander
in his expedition to India. The narratives of Arrian, Diodoros,
Plutarch, and Strabo the geographer have been translated by Dr. J.
W. M'Crindle {FN41-3} to throw a shaft of light on ancient India.
The most admirable feature of Alexander's unsuccessful invasion
was the deep interest he displayed in Hindu philosophy and in the
yogis and holy men whom he encountered from time to time and whose
society he eagerly sought. Shortly after the Greek warrior had
arrived in Taxila in northern India, he sent a messenger, Onesikritos,
a disciple of the Hellenic school of Diogenes, to fetch an Indian
teacher, Dandamis, a great sannyasi of Taxila.
"Hail to thee, O teacher of Brahmins!" Onesikritos said after
seeking out Dandamis in his forest retreat. "The son of the mighty
God Zeus, being Alexander who is the Sovereign Lord of all men,
asks you to go to him, and if you comply, he will reward you with
great gifts, but if you refuse, he will cut off your head!"
The yogi received this fairly compulsive invitation calmly, and
"did not so much as lift up his head from his couch of leaves.
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