Invasion of India by Alexander the Great

The invasion of India by Alexander the Great, like the first voyage of Columbus to America, was the means of opening up a new world to the knowledge of manking. It may even be asserted that had that invasion not taken place, the knowledge of India among the nations of the west would not have advanced much beyond where ktesias left it until the maritime passage to the east by the Cape of Good Hope had been discovered.
It was in the year 326 B.C. that Alexander, fresh from the conquest of the fierce tribes of northern Afganistan, led his army over into the plains of India. He remained in the country not more than twenty months all told, yet the rapidity with which he achieved his actual conquests in the country appears all the more surprising when we take into account that at every stage of his advance he encountered a most determined resistance. The people, most martial in temperament and inured to arms were led by such a capable commander as Poros.
But it is to be regretted that the works in which writers, narrators who were wither witness of the events they described or living at the time of their occurrence, recorded their Indian experience have all, without exception, perished. However, the main substance of their contents from the histories of Alexander, written several centuries after his death by the authors, have been translated here.
The publishers are proud to bring out the missing link of the Indian history.