Page:History of India Vol 2.djvu/132

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102
ALEXANDER'S INDIAN CAMPAIGN

unlike those established in the other Asiatic provinces, took no root. The campaign, although carefully designed to secure a permanent conquest, was in actual effect no more than a brilliantly successful raid on a gigantic scale, which left upon India no mark save the horrid scars of bloody war.

India remained unchanged. The wounds of battle were quickly healed; the ravaged fields smiled again as the patient oxen and no less patient husbandmen resumed their interrupted labours; and the places of the slain myriads were filled by the teeming swarms of a population which knows no limits save those imposed by the cruelty of man or the still more pitiless operations of nature. India was not Hellenized. She continued to live her life of "splendid isolation," and soon forgot the passing of the Macedonian storm.


"The East bowed low before the blast
In patient, deep disdain;
She let the legions thunder past,
And plunged in thought again."