NDA (II) 2022 General Ability Test · Question 123 of 150

Correct — A, Hyphasis. Hyphasis is the Greek name of the Beas, and it is the one river in this list that Alexander never got across — read the stem carefully, because it asks which river was NOT crossed. After defeating Porus on the Jhelum in 326 BC he pushed east over the Chenab and the Ravi, but on the bank of the Beas his exhausted troops mutinied and refused to march any further east. Alexander gave way, raised altars on the bank to mark the limit of his advance, and turned back down the Jhelum and the Indus towards the sea.

• (b)Acesines — Acesines is the Greek name of the Chenab. It lay between the Jhelum and the Ravi on the eastward march and was crossed on the way to the Beas, so it is not the river he stopped at.
• (c)Hydraotes — Hydraotes is the Greek name of the Ravi, the third of the four rivers going east. The army crossed it and only halted one river later, on the Beas.
• (d)Hydaspes — Hydaspes is the Greek name of the Jhelum, and it is the river Alexander is most famous for crossing — he forced a stormy night crossing to fight Porus there in 326 BC. Picking it is the classic mistake of missing the negative in the question.

Alexander of Macedon entered the north-west of the subcontinent in 327-326 BC and worked his way eastward across the rivers of the Punjab, each of which the Greeks knew by its own name. Going from west to east the sequence is Hydaspes (Jhelum), Acesines (Chenab), Hydraotes (Ravi) and Hyphasis (Beas). The campaign's turning point came not in battle but on a riverbank, when the army — years from home, worn down by monsoon rain and by reports of the huge forces of the Nanda kingdom further east — simply refused to go on.

The whole item turns on knowing the order of the four rivers and remembering that the march ran west to east. Since the army stopped at the last of the four, the river it never crossed has to be the easternmost one, the Hyphasis or Beas. Two of the names look alike, and Hydaspes is the one every textbook mentions because of the battle with Porus, so a hurried reader who does not register the word 'not' will reach for it. Alexander was never defeated in India; the mutiny on the Beas was a refusal by his own men, not a military reverse.

• Hydaspes is the Jhelum, Acesines the Chenab, Hydraotes the Ravi and Hyphasis the Beas.
• Alexander's army mutinied on the bank of the Hyphasis and refused to march further east, making the Beas the eastern limit of his advance.
• The Battle of the Hydaspes against Porus was fought on the Jhelum in 326 BC.
• The Chenab is called Asikni in the Rigveda and Chandrabhaga in the Mahabharata; the Ravi is the Vedic Parushni or Iravati.

• Missing the negative in the stem and choosing Hydaspes, the river Alexander is famous for crossing.
• Confusing Hyphasis with Hydaspes because the two Greek names look alike.
• Treating the halt on the Beas as a military defeat — Alexander lost no battle in India, his own troops refused to advance.

As a Greek-name to modern-river match, as the place where the army mutinied, or as a question on who ruled north India at the time of the invasion.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Battle of the Hydaspes in 326 BC was fought between Alexander and which Indian ruler?

  • (a)Ambhi
  • (b)Porus
  • (c)Dhana Nanda
  • (d)Chandragupta Maurya

  Answer(b) Porus — Ambhi of Taxila submitted without a fight, while Porus resisted on the Jhelum.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Greek name Hydraotes refers to which modern river?

  • (a)Chenab
  • (b)Ravi
  • (c)Beas
  • (d)Sutlej

  Answer(b) Ravi — known to the Greeks as Hydraotes and in Vedic literature as Parushni or Iravati.