Alexander, encamped along the Hydaspes, has Indian shipwrights build a fleet of eight hundred to one thousand ships, some as large as three hundred tons, to take the army through Persian Gulf waters to Babylon.

Plutarch reports that Alexander met with Chandragupta Maurya, a low-caste protégé of the Brahmin Kautilya (or Chanakya), probably around Takshila in the northwest, and that he viewed the ruling Nanda Empire in a negative light (classical Greek and Latin sources refer to Chandragupta by the names "Sandracottos" or "Andracottus": "Androcottus, when he was a stripling, saw Alexander himself, and we are told that he often said in later times that Alexander narrowly missed making himself master of the country, since its king was hated and despised on account of his baseness and low birth."

Chandragupta, who will soon overthrow the last Nanda king and found the Maurya Empire, will succeed in bringing together most of the Indian subcontinent.

As a result, Chandragupta is considered the first unifier of India and the first genuine emperor of India.

Ptolemy has been closely associated with Alexander during the advance through the Persian highland; as a result of the former’s successful military performance on the way from Bactria to the Indus River, he receives command (as trierarchos) of the Macedonian fleet on the Hydaspes.

Leaving Porus, …