What exactly did he look like? the only pics i find him about online are europeanised paintings

That's because King Porus is only famous in the Western world, but not in India itself.

Porus was just a minor warlord in India and never had any power beyond Punjab. The only reason why he became famous in the Greco-Roman world was because he was Alexander's toughest opponent, despite Porus being outnumbered.

The only thing known about Porus' appearance was his tall height. According to Greek sources, Porus was 5 cubits tall, which could be anywhere between 6 foot to 7.5 foot tall. On the other hand, Alexander's height was probably around 5 foot.

I think its funny how contemporary western textbooks always "overlook" the fact that Alex was a midget....

His real name was Puru. Porus was actually what Greek used to call him by that name. As @Jagger pointed out that Porus was a king of a minor kingdom, so there is not much information about him from Indian sources, this is very correct.


I think Alexander was 5' 2" in height. This was a normal height in those times. And Porus with more than 6 feet height was a giant on those times.

King Puru is originated from Eastern Punjab isn't he? Kingdom of Paurava? Wow, this is about Mahbharata things, interesting.

Paurava was the name of a kingdom located in the Punjab region in ancient times, and had existed since 1500 BC, when King Sudas of the Pauravas defeated ten other Indian and Iranian kingdoms during the Battle of the Ten Kings, as described in the Rig-Veda, the oldest Hindu scripture. Paurava was also one of the kingdoms that fought in the Kurukshetra War described in the Mahabharata.

When Alexander invaded India in 326 BC, the Paurava kingdom was divided between King Porus controlling the Western portion (roughly equivalent to the Pakistani Punjab) and with the powerful Nanda Empire from the east (from around Bihar and Bengal) controlling the Eastern portion (roughly equivalent to the Indian Punjab). Alexander conquered the western portion of Paurava, but his men refused to challenge the powerful Nanda Empire further east. Since his men had such a hard time fighting Porus' smaller army, the prospect of facing the much larger Nanda army (and especially their war elephants) lowered the morale of his army.

The Paurava kingdom ceased to exist once the entire kingdom was conquered by the teenage adventurer Chandragupta Maurya, the first emperor of India, in 322 BC. Chandragupta was the founder of the Maurya Empire and he went on to conquer almost the whole of Southern Asia and parts of eastern Persia after he defeated Seleucus Nicator (who re-conquered most of Alexander's empire). Chandragupta's grandson was Ashoka the Great, who was responsible for spreading Buddhism across the ancient world.

Thats intersting thanks

Funny how in the alexander the movie they were potraited as savages -_-

The Indians were portrayed as backwards forest-dwellers in the movie, but there's nothing "savage" about that, even though it's completely inaccurate... they could have at least shown the Indians living in cities rather than jungles... and Porus was too short, nowhere near as tall as the historical sources state.

Also, Alexander looked nothing like a Greek in that movie (the real Alexander never had any blonde hair), and his wife Roxanne looked like a black woman rather than a Persian.

Nevertheless, movies aren't exactly renowned for their historical accuracy, so I wouldn't be too bothered by it.

So true.

Thanks Jagger, that is an interesting explanation. Well, Hollywood is not always about historical accuracy when it comes to Asians or Africans. Mostly, they are just making films for materialistic entertainments. I believe that the inhabitants of ancient India which had been prtrayed in Mahabharata as already civilized and they maybe had invented somekind like nuclear weapon. Not to overpraise, but this one is based from materials that I had read somewhere. They are based from researches made by historians, scientists, and archeologists. We can't simply judge just anything from ancient epics as absurd without making researches, they maybe contained metaphors which tell us about historical accounts in certain time period. People in ancient times are very high in philosophy. As SEA'ns, we owed India in the term of philosophy and cultural establishments. The epics Ramayana and Mahabharata had influenced most of us.

HollyWeird

I read about the ancient Indian nuclear war theory as well a few years ago, but it's extremely unlikely. The ancient Indians did have advanced alchemy, astronomy, mathematics, philosophy, metallurgy, technology, etc., but that's not enough to create a nuclear weapon. The scientific method did not exist at that time, and you'd need to know the theories of relavity and mass-energy equivalence, which Einstein would not have been able to discover without standing on the shoulders of many scientists who came before him.

However, those passages in the Mahabharata do suggest that the ancient Indians had flammable or destructive weapons of some kind, but I think it was exaggerated. The Mahabharata could have been referring to something like gunpowder or Greek fire, but exaggerated the level of destruction.

Interesting...

Also, it seems Robert Oppenheimer, the inventor of the atomic bomb, was in fact inspired by the Mahabharata. After the first successful nuclear test, he quoted the Bhagavad Gita:

"If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the mighty one. Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds."

Alexander and Porus Coin Babylon around 323 BC


Battle of the Hydaspes River


Thats all i could find