Europeans in India – The Portuguese Part 1 Background: Ancient and Medieval

Canberra, 09 November 2022 The Indian sub-continent was known to the people of Europe in antiquity, with the ancient Greeks recording their knowledge of India in some of the texts of the time. Cyrus the Great (r. 558–530 BC) of the famous Achaemenid Dynasty of Persia, built the first universal empire, stretching from Greece to […]

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Indian History Part 43 THE KHYBER PASS Section II Alexander of Macedonia

Canberra, 25 October 2015 Alexander of Macedonia, often called ‘Alexander the Great’, became the first confirmed outsider to have defeated an Indian king when he routed the army of King Porus on the banks of the River Hydaspes. How did he reach so far from his native Macedonia to the banks of the great Indus […]

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Indian History Part 43 THE KHYBER PASS: GATEWAY TO INDIA

Canberra, 14 September 2015 The English writer Rudyard Kipling’s 1890 poem The Ballad of the King’s Jest begins with this stanza: When spring-time flushes the desert grass, Our kafilas wind through the Khyber Pass. Lean are the camels but fat the frails, Light are the purses but heavy the bales, As the snowbound trade of the North […]

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