Free Ashoka: The Search for India's Lost Emperor by Charles R. Allen Page A

Gandhara, initially sharing control of the Punjab with his ally King Poros before securing Poros’s death by treachery. 10 He and his fellow Macedonian Peithon, satrap of the lower Indus region, hung on but with each passing year their authority diminished until finally both generals withdrew with their armies into Persia in order to participate in the ongoing power struggle for Alexander’s empire.
    The winner in the east was Seleukos, afterwards known as
Nikator
, or ‘the Victor’. In 305 BCE , having secured ‘the whole region from Phrygia to the Indus’, Seleukos the Victor felt strong enough to proclaim himself king of Mesopotamia and Persia. He then set about reclaiming Alexander’s territories beyond the Indus, which had long since reverted to Indian rule.
    What followed is summarised by the historians Appian, Justin and Plutarch. According to the first: ‘He [Seleukos the Victor] crossed the Indus and waged war with Androkottos, king of the Indians, who dwelt on the banks of that stream.’ 11 Justin gives a slightly longer account: ‘He first took Babylon, and then with his force augmented by victory subjugated the Bactrians. He then passed over into India, which after Alexander’s death, as if the yoke of servitude had been shaken off from its neck, had put his prefects to death. Sandrocottus was the leader who achieved their freedom.’ 12 Plutarch has more to add on this new Indian ruler: ‘Androkottos, who had by that time mounted the throne, presented Seleukos with 500 elephants, and overran and subdued the whole of India with an army of 600,000 …
Androkottos himself, when he was but a youth, saw Alexander himself
, and afterwards used to declare that Alexander could easily have taken the country since the kingwas hated and despised by his subjects for the wickedness of his disposition and the meanness of his origin.’ 13 Clearly, Androkottos and Sandrocottus are one and the same.
    It is at this juncture, after a lapse of some twenty years, that the Indian mercenary Sisikottos/Sisocostus and the more shadowy Meroes give way to Sandrocottus (Justin), Androkottos (Appian and Plutarch), Sandrakottos (Pliny the Elder), Sandrokottos (Strabo), and – most accurately of all – Sandrocoptus (mentioned by the third-century CE Greek philosopher Athenaios in a fleeting reference) 14 – referred to hereafter by the core name of Sandrokoptos, no longer a mercenary but king of India.
    Of this new ruler Sandrokoptos, king of the Ganderites and Praesians, and his relations with the Macedonian Seleukos the Victor, king of Mesopotamia and Persia – no one is more forthcoming than Justin, even if he adds some fanciful details about the latter’s rise to power:
He [Sandrokoptos] was born in humble life, but was prompted to aspire to royalty by an omen significant of an august destiny. For when by his insolence he had offended Nandrus, and was ordered by that king to be put to death, he sought safety by a speedy flight. When he lay down overcome with fatigue and had fallen into a deep sleep, a lion of enormous size, approaching the slumberer licked with its tongue the sweat which oozed profusely from his body, and, when he awoke, quietly took its departure. It was this prodigy which first inspired him with the hope of winning the throne, and so, having collected a band of robbers, he instigated the Indians to overthrow the existing government. When he was thereafter preparing to attack Alexander’s prefects, a wild elephant of monstrous size approached him,and, kneeling submissively like a tame elephant, received him on to its back and fought vigorously in front of the army. Sandrocottus, having thus won the throne, was reigning over India, when Seleukos was laying the foundations of his future greatness. 15
    Here the Indian king whom Sandrokoptos offended is named not Xandrames or Aggrames (as given by Alexander’s historians) but more correctly as Nandrus. By this account – and ignoring the giant lion and