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8/25/2018 (1) What was the most shameful military defeat suffered by your country?
- Quora
Oddly enough, I don’t see any answers on here that have to do with Pakistan’s military defeats — are we just that good,
guys?
Course not.
Everyone’s heard about the horrific blunders that Wikipedia generously calls the India-Pakistan wars and the Bengali
Genocide (as Muhammed Borhanuddin has excellently explained), so in order to avoid a massive migraine, I’m gonna take
a breath of fresh air and jump all the way back to the sixth century BC.
(Before you angrily comment about how Pakistan was founded in 1947 AD, not 1947 BC — yes, I know that, angry
commenter. Allow me this leeway, just this once.)
Now, some Pakistanis wouldn’t necessarily find the following shameful, but I do — because the successive defeats I’ll talk
about kickstarted two millennia of (nearly) contiguous non-native* rule over the area that now comprises most of
Pakistan.
Yikes.
So, without any further ado, I present the Achaemenian conquests of northwestern India (518–513 BC):
I. Backstory:
The mastermind behind this operation was Dārayavuš, King of the Andals and the First Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms,
Breaker of Chains, Mother of Drago— oh wait! Wrong history.
Anyways, he’s widely known in Greco-Roman accounts as Darius I (r. 550–486 BC), AKA Sāmapriẏa Basu’s great-great-
great-great-great granduncle and like the sixth dynast of his lineage.
Shah Dārayavuš was decidedly not a pansy, and he had that fact stamped into a cliffside at Mount Behistun in Iran, just to
prove it.
I’ve discussed the Inscription in this answer, but there’s an important connection between this massive rock-relief
describing Darius laying down the law thanks to the help of Ahuramazda (if you don’t know what that is, I encourage you
to check out Zartusht Ashavan’s answers) and Achaemenid rule over northwestern India — namely, the brief account of
the rebellion of the satrapy that now encompasses Sindh:
I am Dâryavuš, the shahanshah, the king of Pârsa, the king of countries, the son of Hystaspes, the grandson of Arsames,
the Achaemenid . . .
https://www.quora.com/What-was-the-most-shameful-military-defeat-suffered-by-your-country 1/11
8/25/2018 (1) What was the most shameful military defeat suffered by your country? - Quora
These are the countries which are subject unto me, and by the grace of Ahuramazda I became king of them: Pârsa, Ûvja,
Bâbiruš, Athurâ, Arabâya, Mudrâya, Sparda, Yauna, Mâda, Armina, Katpatuka, Parthava, Zraka, Aria, Uvârazmîy,
Bactria, Sogdia, Gandhara [northern Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunwa], Scythia, Sattagyida [eastern Baluchistan and
Sindh] Arachosia[lower Punjab, Khyber Pakhtunwa and southeastern Afghanistan] and Maka; twenty-three lands in
all . . .
While I was in Babylon, these provinces revolted from me: Persia, Elam, Media, Assyria, Egypt, Parthia,
Marguš, Sattagyida, and Scythia.
Far-flung Sattagyida (again, corresponding to modern Sindh, or perhaps the entire southern half of the Indus valley)
apparently didn’t like the new sheriff in town, and made the woeful mistake of revolting from a man
who carved intorock the names of various rebels and warlords he crucified, flayed, stuffed with straw or generally
pounded into dust.
It was under this pretext that Darius, in full force, with armies that drink rivers dry and whose arrows blot out the sun,
crossed the Hindu Kush and claimed as his own everywhere from the northern stretch of the Jhelum River to the mouth of
the Indus near modern-day Karachi.
^ 2,500 year-old bas-relief of Darius crossing the Hindu Kush. I promise there’s only one other cringey 300 joke in here
So even though we know that the leader of this rebellion shared the same fate as an obscure Jewish visionary from Roman
Palestine, what do we know about the people who rebelled against and presumably fought Darius’s world-sweeping tide of
conquest? Well, we know what the people who pledged fealty and submission to Darius looked like:
Among the classical authors, Xenophon states that ‘Cyrus brought under his rule Bactrians and Indians’, while Arrian
writes in Indika that ‘the regions beyond the Indus River on the west are inhabited, up the river Kophen, by two Indian
tribes, the Astakenoi and the Assakenoi. They were in old times subject to the Assyrians, then after a period of Median
rule, submitted to the Persians and paid to Cyrus, son of Cambyses, the tribute from their land which Cyrus had
imposed. . .
The inscription on the tomb of Darius at Naqsh-i-Rustam must have been executed approximately about the time of his
death in 486–5 BC. Among its sculptures, we find the representations of three nations that have been called “Indian”,
corresponding to the three Indian [satrapal units] of the Achaemenid Empire. . .
Herzfeld gives the following description of them; ‘All the three are identical; they are naked but for a loincloth and a
turban on their heads, and their weapon is a long, broad sword hanging by a strap from the shoulder.’
In this connection, we may note that Herodotus, while speaking of the Indians, states that they ‘wear a garment made of
rushes, which, when they have cut the reed from the river and beaten it, they afterward plait like a mat and wear it like a
corselet.’
Basically, the ‘Indians’ were badass warriors wearing cotton underwear, and considering the geographic area, were as
militaristic and tribal as these guys (and looked like them too, minus the clothing and automatic weaponry):
To be more specific, after the slow death of Harappan (IVC) culture, genetic studies show that West Eurasian steppe
people gradually entered and intermingled with the mixture of AASI (Ancient Ancestral South Indian) and Iranian
agriculturalist peoples that made up IVC populations, starting what is referred to as the ‘Vedic’ era of Indian history.
This ‘Vedic’ era is itself characterized by the fragmentation of northwestern India into a multitude of princedoms,
tribes, maharajahs and mahajapandas, with some serious infighting — one of the epochal battles of Vedic mythology is
that of the “Battle of Ten Kings” (even cooler than the Battle of Five Armies in The Hobbit), for example. We even know
the names of the various tribes and principalities Darius I encountered — the Kamboja, Sindhu, Taksas, Madras, Kathas,
Mallas and Tugras, and probably many more whose names don’t grace history.
As a result, before the Achaemenian invasion, this entire region resembled the Aegean Peninsula during the
Peloponnesian War, or the Central Eurasian steppe throughout like all of history — hardened military-states fighting over
dominance and switching alliances and allegiances faster than Roose Bolton could say “The Lannisters send their regards”.
Stretching from 1100 to 500 BC (unsurprisingly ending not long after Darius I’s invasion), the Late Vedic period witnessed
the wide-scale usage of bronze weaponry, chariots, cavalry (those steppe peoples were super fond of all things equestrian),
archery and as Alexander found out the hard way at the Battle of the Hydaspes, even war-elephants.
Although this account is about 200 years off the mark, Arrian’s Anabasis of Alexander discusses the brutal resistance
post-Vedic maharajahs put up to the Macedonians along Alexander III of Macedon’s campaigns through the heart of
Punjab and down the Indus:
However, at last [Porus] preferred to march against Alexander himself with all his army, and to come into a decisive
conflict with the strongest division of the Macedonians, commanded by the king in person . . . He took all his cavalry to
the number of 4,000 men, all his chariots to the number of 300, with 200 of his elephants and 30,000 choice infantry,
and marched against Alexander.
First he placed the elephants in the front, each animal being not less than a plethrum apart, so that they might be
extended in the front before the whole of the phalanx of infantry, and produce terror everywhere among Alexander's
cavalry. Besides, he thought that none of the enemy would have the audacity to push themselves into the spaces
between the elephants, the cavalry being deterred by the fright of their horses; and still less would the infantry do so, it
being likely they would be kept off in front by the heavy-armed soldiers falling upon them, and trampled down by the
elephants wheeling round against them.
Near these he had posted the infantry, not occupying a line on a level with the beasts, but in a second line behind them,
only so far distant that the companies of foot might be pushed forward a short distance into the spaces between them.
He had also bodies of infantry standing beyond the elephants on the wings; and on both sides of the infantry he had
posted the cavalry, in front of which were placed the chariots on both wings of his army.
Basically, these guys probably weren’t as organized as the imperial Iranians or Alex’s Greeks, but they were some fierce
bastards with a penchant for blood.
And the Achaemenids certainly did not underrate them either — ‘Indians’ were impressed en masse into the Achaemenid
military structure in an astounding way:
The Indians of Hinduš nevertheless remained loyal to the reign of Darius III [the last one], who recognized their loyalty
and their fighting ability by placing them next to the Thousand Immortals who guarded his person.
There was enough contact with the West almost to the end of the 5th century BC for Herodotus to be able to declare that
in number, the Indians were far greater than all the other peoples known to the Greeks, that they paid their Persian
lords the heaviest tribute (360 talents of gold dust), that Indian dogs were used in the Persian army, and that in his day,
four Babylonian villages were set aside for their support.
But you already know what Darius’ goons looked like:
God, how I love and loathe this movie
The expeditionary force Darius I launched across the scorched and freezing mountains of the Hindu Kush probably
consisted of some battle-hardened troops, considering Darius spent maybe the first decade of his rule crushing a
simmering general revolt across the empire.
Here’s what they actually looked like:
II. The Battles
Great, enough with the boring exposition. Let’s get onto the blood and gore.
Wellllll . . . ummmmmmm . . . hrmmmm . . . I would tell you about the humiliating defeats and Darius’ suave conquests in
northwestern India, but we just don’t know much about them.
No, it’s not because those dastardly Moozlims ruined Iran and burned all her books and stuff. Virtually everything we
know about Achaemenid Persia comes from either rock-solid inscriptions at places like Behistun or Naqsh-i-Rustam
where the shahanshahs like to portray themselves as earth-consuming emissaries of divine wrath and justice, or from
respected Greco-Roman documentarians like Herodotus, Scylax and Zach Snyder, who tend to err on the side of
portraying the Persians as tyrannic and opulent Orientals.
It’s just a natural consequence of 2,000 years of successive invasions (Hellenes, Parthians, Scythians, Arabs, etc.),
degradation and loss of transmission getting to organic material like parchments and papers.
(But let’s tip our hats off to the centuries of Byzantine and Muslim Arab documentarians who worked tirelessly to translate
and transmit the works of the greatest Hellenes to us.
Actually, don’t tip your hats off to them.
Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics is literal torture.)
Anyways, here’s what historians speculate about the conquests:
They occurred sometime before Darius’ incursions into the Scythia that spanned the lands east of the Danube and Volga
Rivers in Ukraine and the Caucasus region, somewhere from 518 to 515 BC — 515 BC is particularly important, because as
we’ll see, the Indian satrapies were fantastically rich, well-watered and fertile, and Daric gold coinage, possibly a result
from the wholesale looting northwestern India, was introduced throughout the empire in 515.
Coincidence?
I think not.
Depiction of an Indian from Hinduš bringing gold to the Shah, from a bas-relief in the ruins of Persepolis.
A map roughly outlining Darius’ expansion into the Indus Valley — the three satrapies of Gandhara, Sattagydia and
Hinduš can be seen at the far right.
The conquests themselves were probably crushingly easy for the Iranians, considering Darius I not only came back in one
piece, but confidently launched about two more large-scale military campaigns into the Balkans and Scythian Europe, as
well as quelling another Babylonian revolt. I’d love to say the Indians put up a nasty fight like they managed with
Alexander, but we just don’t have any sources that say so, and it’s likely they were embarrassingly defeated.
And to add onto that, we know that all three of these satrapies sucked a whole lot of gold, treasure and spoils out of
northwestern India and the Indus basin, thousands of Indians were conscripted (or enslaved) into the Achaemenid armies,
and Iranian rule over the region remained strong until Alexander’s dissolution of the empire in the west, in the 4th century
BC.
*face-palms*
The satrapy of Hinduš, more specifically, was sandwiched in between the Indus and Jhelum, and most likely extended a
little bit farther east. From this map, you can see that Alexander III of Macedon ate up a much bigger chunk of the
Punjab than the Achaemenids ever had, stopping only at the Beas River, many miles east of Amritsar.
The Indus River as it passes through a narrow gorge in Gilgit Baltistan.
The Jhelum River as it courses through the northwestern Punjab.
III. Aftermath
By now, you should get the point.
By the time Darius clipped Hinduš [westernmost Punjab] onto his belt around 517 BC, it was instantly one of the richest
registered satrapies in an empire that stretched from the Nile to the Indus, according to Greek chronicler and explorer
Scylax.
Scylax of Caryanda was actually assigned by Darius I to explore his new “Indian” domains, boarding a ship from the
northern stretch of the Indus in Gandhara, sailing all the way down to the Arabian Sea and eventually returning to Egypt.
His original accounts are lost to us, but he allegedly described the native peoples, cultures, religions and animals of
northwestern India in great detail.
Anyways, this was the long and grueling start of Pakistan’s journey with imperial rule — after the Achaemenids came the
Macedonians, then the Maurya, then the Greco-Bactrians and Indo-Greeks, then the Indo-Scythians, then the Indo-
Parthians, then the Yuezhi (Kushan), then the Gupta, then the Indo-Hephaltites . . . and so on and so forth.
I guess you could say we bend the knee too easily :(
Although this is a map of some of the Indo-Greek dynasties, note that Gandhara and Hinduš occupied the far-eastern
half of that purplish blob in the middle.
But that’s ancient history.
So bring it on for round 2, Iran!
Tehran would be an irradiated parking lot in less than a minute, this time:
*sweats profusely as Ayatollah’s head slowly peeks out from behind the curtains
Hahaha just kidding.
Iran and Pakistan are best buds nowadays!
Please correct any mistakes you see above in the comment section or through edits! Organic chemistry and writing
answers about Pakistani history don’t go well together.
(Also, as an American, the USA’s only really been “shamefully” defeated on its home soil by the likes of a Canadian-British
expeditionary force during the War of 1812. But I know Shaheer Hashmi is only studying in the US to scout out the next
Canadian invasion of the US . . . )
Sources:
The Achaemenids and India by Sudhakar Chattopadhyaya
https://books.google.com/books?i...
M. A. Dandamaev. "A Political History of the Achaemenid Empire”
The Grandeur of Gandhara
Darius I | king of Persia
Scylax of Caryanda

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8/25/2018 (1) What was the most shameful military defeat suffered by your country?

But you already know what Darius’ goons looked like:

God, how I love and loathe this movie

Here’s what they actually looked like:

II. The Battles

Actually, don’t tip your hats off to them.

Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics is literal torture.)

Anyways, here’s what historians speculate about the conquests:

The Indus River as it passes through a narrow gorge in Gilgit Baltistan.

The Jhelum River as it courses through the northwestern Punjab.

By now, you should get the point.

I guess you could say we bend the knee too easily :(

But that’s ancient history.

So bring it on for round 2, Iran!

Hahaha just kidding.

Iran and Pakistan are best buds nowadays!

The Achaemenids and India by Sudhakar Chattopadhyaya

M. A. Dandamaev. "A Political History of the Achaemenid Empire”

The Grandeur of Gandhara

Darius I | king of Persia

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