Porus Fought Alexander at the Hydaspes in 326 BCE Until His Army Was Broken, Was Given a Larger Kingdom Than He Had Held Before, and Was Still Its King When the Macedonians Refused to Go Beyond the Beas

Porus ruled the country between the Jhelum and the Chenab, and in the spring of 326 BCE he held the east bank of the Jhelum against Alexander of Macedon, fighting until most of his army had gone down around him. Britannica notes that, unlike his neighbour Ambhi, the king of Taxila, Porus resisted. Alexander won the battle. Arrian and Plutarch both say he then handed Porus his kingdom back with added territory, and Diodorus says he restored the kingdom. Later in the same campaign Alexander’s own soldiers refused to go on past the Beas, which the Greek writers call the Hyphasis.

Every surviving ancient account of this was written by Greeks or Romans, and they disagree on numbers, dates and titles. What follows sets out where they agree and marks where they do not.

A king between two rivers

Britannica places Porus’s kingdom in the land between the Hydaspes, now the Jhelum, and the Acesines, now the Chenab. No Indian source names him, Britannica says, and scholars have guessed that Porus stands for Paurava, the ruler of the Purus, a tribe known in that region from Vedic times. Livius.org adds that the Sanskrit name of the Hydaspes was Vitasta.

Alexander came to the area by way of Taxila, whose ruler welcomed him (our piece on Takshashila describes that city). Arrian’s telling is that he left a garrison there and marched for the Jhelum after hearing that Porus waited on the far bank with his whole army, ready either to stop the crossing or to attack the Macedonians as they came over.

Where the accounts come from

Arrian was born near the end of the first century CE at Nicomedia, according to the biographical note in E. J. Chinnock’s 1884 translation, so he wrote more than four centuries after the battle. His preface says he trusted Ptolemy, son of Lagus, who marched with Alexander, and Aristobulus, who served in the expedition. Other versions come from Diodorus in his Library of History and from Plutarch, who quotes letters Alexander himself wrote. Britannica’s account of the battle adds that little is known about Porus except from Greek sources.

The river and the night crossing

Porus, according to Arrian, posted guards at every ford and camped opposite Alexander’s army with his elephants. The river ran high with monsoon rain and snowmelt, and Alexander let it be known that he would wait for winter, when it would be fordable. Meanwhile he marched detachments up and down the bank and raised noise at night, until Porus stopped following each alarm.

Then the Macedonians moved about 150 stades from the main camp (Arrian’s figure) to a wooded headland opposite an island. Boats that Coenus had cut into sections to haul them from the Indus were put back together there. After a night of heavy rain, at first light, the cavalry crossed on skins stuffed with hay and the infantry in boats. Alexander landed on what proved to be another island, Arrian says, and had to find a ford across the channel beyond it, where the water came above the chests of the infantrymen.

Against this force Porus sent his son, and the accounts of that clash differ. Aristobulus, as Arrian reports him, said the son came with about sixty chariots. Ptolemy, whom Arrian prefers, gave 2,000 cavalry and 120 chariots, and said 400 horsemen fell, the son among them. Clayey ground left the chariots almost useless, Arrian adds.

The elephants in front

Porus then marched out with all he could take from the camp. Arrian lists 30,000 infantry, 4,000 cavalry, 300 chariots and 200 elephants, with a few elephants left behind to keep Craterus’s men from crossing. On firm sandy ground he put the elephants in front about a plethrum (100 Greek feet, in Chinnock’s note) apart, the infantry behind in the gaps, the cavalry on the wings and the chariots in front of the cavalry. Diodorus says the line looked like a city, with elephants as towers and soldiers as the curtain walls between them.

Strength figures differ. Diodorus counts more than 50,000 infantry, about 3,000 cavalry, more than 1,000 chariots and 130 elephants. Britannica puts the army at about 30,000 troops, noting that some sources say 50,000.

Alarmed by the centre, Arrian says, Alexander rode at the left wing with his cavalry while Coenus went round to the right. The Indian cavalry fell back on the elephants, and the elephants, hit by javelins and short of drivers, turned on their own side. Macedonians trampled or lifted and thrown by the animals fill Diodorus’s account, which also has Porus gather about forty elephants still under control for a second charge. Plutarch, drawing on Alexander’s letters, puts the end of the fighting at the eighth hour.

The casualty figures are far apart:

• Arrian puts the Indian dead at nearly 20,000 infantry and 3,000 cavalry, and Alexander’s losses at about 80 foot soldiers, 10 horse archers, 20 Companion cavalry and about 200 other horsemen.
• Diodorus gives more than 12,000 Indians killed and more than 9,000 captured, with 80 elephants, against 280 Macedonian cavalry and more than 700 infantry.
• Britannica estimates 12,000 Indian soldiers and 80 elephants lost, and about 1,000 on the Macedonian side.

Treat me in a kingly way

Arrian has Porus stay in the fight as long as any compact body of his men remained, leaving only after a wound to his right shoulder, the one part his armour did not cover. Alexander sent first Taxiles, an old foe whom Porus nearly hit with a javelin, and then Meroes, an old friend. Thirsty, Porus got down from his elephant, drank, and asked to be taken to Alexander. Diodorus tells it differently, with Porus fainting from loss of blood, falling, and being thought dead before he recovered under care.

His size is reported differently too. Arrian puts him somewhat above five cubits and Diodorus at five. Most historians gave four cubits and a span, Plutarch says, and a footnote in Bernadotte Perrin’s translation puts that at six feet three inches.

When Alexander asked how he wanted to be treated, Porus answered, in Arrian’s report, “Treat me, O Alexander, in a kingly way!” Plutarch gives the reply as “Like a king.” Alexander then gave him rule over his own people and added a country larger than his earlier one.

The later grants vary by writer. Arrian has Alexander give him the land of the Glausians, whose thirty-seven cities had surrendered, then add the country to the Hyphasis, and finally name him king of seven nations with more than 2,000 cities. Plutarch says Alexander gave him the title of satrap and added territory said to hold fifteen nations, 5,000 sizeable cities and many villages. Diodorus has Alexander simply make him king of the country he had ruled before, and Britannica describes him as a Macedonian subordinate ruler.

Another Porus, a cousin, fled to Gandara rather than submit, according to Diodorus. Arrian calls him the bad one and has Alexander send Hephaestion with an army to give his land to the Porus of the Hydaspes.

The refusal at the Beas

From the Hydaspes Alexander marched on east to the Beas. Reports of a fertile country beyond, with many elephants, made him want to go on, Arrian says, but the soldiers would not follow. Coenus spoke for the army: few of the men who set out had survived, and those left wanted to see home. For three days Alexander kept to his tent. Then, on Ptolemy’s authority in Arrian, he sacrificed for the crossing and got unfavourable omens.

Diodorus adds that Alexander asked Porus about the road ahead. According to the report, a desert of twelve days led to the Ganges, and beyond it lived the Tabraesians and the Gandaridae, whose king Xandrames had 20,000 cavalry, 200,000 infantry, 2,000 chariots and 4,000 elephants. Porus, Diodorus says, confirmed all of it. Britannica names the kingdom beyond the Beas as the Nanda empire. In both Greek accounts the army turned Alexander back, and he ordered twelve large altars set up to mark the limit of the advance. Arrian adds that he then joined the country as far as the Hyphasis to Porus’s dominion.

How Porus’s rule ended

Eudamus, a Macedonian officer, brought 120 elephants from India to the wars among Alexander’s successors, and Diodorus says he had obtained them after Alexander’s death by treacherously killing King Porus. The Loeb editor notes that nothing more is known of the attack. Livius.org puts the killing in 317 BCE and says Eudamus wanted the elephants, while Britannica gives a window of 321 to 315 BCE. With Porus gone, Livius.org adds, Chandragupta Maurya was able to take the Indus valley. Our piece on him covers what followed, including his treaty with Seleucus.

What is still argued

The battlefield has not been fixed. Chinnock’s 1884 note identifies Nicaea, the city Alexander founded for the victory, as Mong, and suggests Bucephala, named for his horse, may be Jalalpur. Livius.org places the crossing near the modern city of Jhelum, at the old ford on the road that led on to the Ganges plain, and reports palaeohydrological findings that the river lay far from Haranpur and Jalalpur until the eighth century CE.

An argument made in the 1960s by the Indian scholar Buddha Prakash, drawn from the Persian Shahnameh, held that Porus defeated Alexander. Livius.org says it cannot be accepted as serious scholarship. Arrian, Diodorus and Plutarch all record Alexander as the winner of the battle and Porus as the king who stayed on his throne.

A silver coin in the British Museum, number 1926,0402.1, is catalogued as the Porus medallion. One side shows Alexander on horseback attacking two men mounted on an elephant. On the other is a figure the museum marks with a question mark as Alexander, holding a thunderbolt and crowned by Nike, and the register gives its find-place as “from Mesopotamia”. Livius.org reads the coin as a commemoration of the Macedonian victory, while a 1982 article listed in the museum’s bibliography calls the coinage a symbol of concord and community. As of 5 November 2026 the museum lists the coin as on display in Room 22.