After his army refused to go beyond the Beas, Alexander built a fleet on the Jhelum and sailed down the river towards the sea in 326 and 325 BCE, his army marching along the banks and subduing the peoples on the way.
The fiercest were the Malli, whom many place around Multan, and their neighbours the Oxydracae. When the Macedonians attacked one of the Malli towns, Alexander, impatient with his men's slowness, climbed a scaling ladder onto the wall with only three companions and leapt down inside. He was shot through the chest by an arrow and nearly died before his soldiers broke in and, in their fury, killed everyone in the town.
He survived, but the wound weakened him. He reached the delta of the Indus and returned west through the desert of Gedrosia, losing much of his army, and died at Babylon two years later.
Same era
Invaders at the gates, 1400 BCE – 1221
A Rigvedic battle on the Parushni, the Ravi, in which the Bharata king Sudas defeated ten allied tribes when they tried to divert the river.
Alexander crossed the flooded Jhelum by night and defeated Porus and his war elephants. Impressed by Porus, he returned his kingdom to him.
Mahmud's first great victory in India, which broke the Hindu Shahi kingdom and opened Punjab to two decades of raids.
Mahmud's second great victory over the Hindu Shahis, on the plain of Chach near Attock, which left the Punjab open to him.
Prithviraj Chauhan routed the Ghurid army near Thanesar; Muhammad of Ghor was wounded and carried from the field.
A year after losing on the same field, Muhammad of Ghor beat Prithviraj with mounted archers, opening north India to the Delhi Sultanate.
Genghis Khan caught the last Khwarazm prince on the Indus. Jalal ad-Din rode his horse off a cliff into the river and escaped into Punjab, drawing Mongol raids after him. The exact site, somewhere on the Indus, is uncertain.
A Mongol army stormed Lahore after the Delhi Sultanate failed to relieve it, and left the city in ruins for decades.