And the vanquished king was not dispossessed, Saint Helenaed, or
beheaded. Simply, he acknowledged his conqueror as his overlord,
paid him tribute; perhaps put his own Kshatriya army at his
disposal; and went on reigning as before. So Porus met Alexander
without the least sense of fear, distrust, or humiliation at his
defeat. "How shall I treat you?" said the Macedonian. Porus
was surprised.--"I suppose," said he in effect, "as one king
would treat another"; or, "like a gentleman." And Alexander rose
to it; in the atmosphere of a civilization higher than anything
he knew, he had the grace to conform to usage. Manu imposed his
will on him. Porus acknowledged him for overlord, and received
accretions of territory.--This explains why all the changes of
dynasty, and the many conquests and invasions have made so little
difference as hardly to be worth recording. They effected no
change in the life of the people. Even the British Raj has been,
to a great degree, molded to the will of Manu. Each strong
native state is ruled by its own Maharaja, who acknowledges the
Kaiser-i-Hind at London for his overlord, and lends him at need
his Moslem or Kshatriya army.--All of which proves, I think, the
extreme antiquity of the svstem: which is so firmly engraved in
the prototypal world--the astral molds are so strong--that no
outside force coming in has been able materially to change it.
The Greek invasion goes wholy unnoticed in Indian literature.

Which brings us back to Alexander. If he got as far as to the
Indus;--he got no farther. There were kingdoms up there in
the northwest--perhaps no further east than Afghanistan and
Baluchistan--which had formed part of the empire of Darius
Hystaspes, and sent contingents to fight under Xerxes in Greece;
and these now Alexander claimed as Darius Codomannus's successor.