Porus
King of the Pauravas between the Jhelum and Chenab, who met Alexander at the Hydaspes with war elephants and, defeated, was restored to his throne.
Porus, in Sanskrit probably Paurava or Puru, was the king of the land between the Jhelum and the Chenab in the fourth century BCE, a big man, the Greek writers say, nearly seven feet tall, ruling a rich country of many towns.
When Alexander of Macedon crossed the Indus in 326 BCE, the king of Taxila submitted, but Porus refused. He drew up his army, with perhaps two hundred war elephants, on the far bank of the Jhelum, the Greek Hydaspes, swollen by the monsoon. Alexander crossed upstream at night in a thunderstorm and attacked. In the battle that followed the elephants trampled the Macedonian phalanx, but Alexander's cavalry broke the Indian flanks, and Porus, wounded, was finally captured.
Asked how he wished to be treated, he is said to have answered: like a king. Alexander, impressed, returned his kingdom to him and enlarged it. A few years later Porus was murdered, perhaps by one of Alexander's officers. To Punjabis he is the first great defender of the land of the five rivers.
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Porus at the Battle of the Hydaspes (Jhelum)Wikimedia Commons · Tapestry after a work by Charles Le Brun, court painter to t · CC BY ↗