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→Alexander’s Invasion of India
The king attempted to persuade them to continue but he failed, and after a stand-off, he relented.<ref>Plutarch, 7, 6</ref> He retreated into modern Pakistan and began to campaign against the powerful Malian tribe, who lived near modern Multan in Pakistan. After a siege, he subdued the Malians but received a near-fatal wound during the fighting. This wound is believed by many to have led to his death. Despite his severe wound Alexander conquered a large number of tribes and reached the Indian Ocean coast of modern Pakistan. He then returned to Persia via the Great Gedoresian Desert, during which he lost much of his army to thirst and hunger. He divided his conquests into four satrapies, and he left behind a considerable army under Peithon. <ref>McCrindle, p 115</ref>
After Alexander the Great’s death, his generals fought a series of civil wars, as they tried to carve out independent states out of his Empire.</ref> Bosworth, Albert Brian. Conquest and Empire: the reign of Alexander the Great (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1993), p 398</ref> The Greek armies in India returned to the west to take part in these wars sometime in 316 BC. Chandragupta Maurya of Magadha founded the Maurya Empire after he overthrew the Nanda Empire in 321 BC.
The course of events after this is not certain, because of the fragmented nature of the sources. It appears that Chandragupta invaded the Macedonian territories in the Punjab and Sind. At this time Seleucus was the most powerful general in the eastern regions of the Alexandrine Empire, sought to reconquer the satrapies lost to the founder of the Mauryan dynasty. There followed the Seleucid–Mauryan War fought between 305 and 303 BC. Details of the war are not known, but it appears that Chandragupta emerged as the victor. Seleucus ceded most if not all of the Alexandrine conquests in India to the Mauryan Empire, and in return, he received 500 war elephants<ref> A. B. Bosworth, The Legacy of Alexander (Oxford University Press, 2008), p 156</ref>. Seleucus used these elephants in his great victory at Ipsus (301 BC). Later there were extensive diplomatic and trading contacts established between the Hellenistic and Indian world.
====The Greeks in India====
