The Khalsa - Welcome to the Macedonian Truth!

[Daskalot]

Welcome Khalsa!
Nice introduction, I learned something new.

[The LION will ROAR]

Welcome Khalsa ..!!!!

Could you give us yours and the Indian view of Alexander the Macedonian..?

Also I remember talking to a knowledgeable Indian (Doctor) afew years back and he mention that his son was called Alexander, but just a different way of pronouncing it...he said that many Indians are called by that name after Alexander the Great... Is this correct..?

[Spartan]

^^Iskander they call him I think??

[The LION will ROAR]

^^Iskander they call him I think??

You could be right spartan.. but from memory it sounded different...
here is what i found
Skanda: The Alexander Romance in India

http://murugan.org/research/gopalapillai.htm

Quote:
In Persian and Arabic and in Eastern languages generally, it is a well-known fact that Alexander is known under the name of Iskandar. And it is natural, if Indian languages have used his name, it might be a variant of its Asiatic form. What form could it normally assume in the ancient Sanskrit language? We are familiar, through Buddhist sources with the Indianization of the name of the Graeco-Bactrian King, Menander.[9] It occurs as Melinda. On the same analogy, Iskander regularly becomes ‘Iskanda.’ It is next an easy step to treat the initial ‘I’ as a case of prosthesis[10] as it obtains regularly in Prakrits, and arrive at the Sanskrit form ‘Skanda’. But a suspicion might lurk whether it is not a case of philological legerdemain. The name of Skanda is familiar in Sanskrit, in Indian languages and literature in general. But has it anything to do with Alexander the Great? Is it not an isolated case of accidental coincidence? It behoves us to examine it further.

[julie]

Welcome Khalsa, I enjoyed your first post.
I had lovely neighbours from Vellore in India , they were doctors who returned to CMC hospital there and I miss them very much, a very rich culture and I look forward to learning more about the Khalsa

Malayalam

[THE KHALSA]

Quote

Welcome Khalsa ..!!!!


Also I remember talking to a knowledgeable Indian (Doctor) afew years back and he mention that his son was called Alexander, but just a different way of pronouncing it...he said that many Indians are called by that name after Alexander the Great... Is this correct..?

Hi LWR,


That Indian doctor you communicated to must have been a Muslim, as Sikander is the persian/muslim version of name Alexander. I cannot recall any of the Hindus/Sikhs from my region, who had a name Sikander but i do know for a fact that this is a very common name amongst the Muslims.
For e.g. Sikander Lodi (a famous muslim king),Shazia Sikander, Sardool Sikander.

We too have a singer in Punjab (India) who is a Muslim and his full name is "Sardool Sikander".

Sikandar (Urdu: سکندر) is the Urdu version of the name Alexander, after Alexander the Great. It is used as male first name in Middle East, Central Asia and South Asia.

Meaning of "Sikander":
- A person who is acting untowardly or selfish towards his or her comrades or associates.

[The LION will ROAR]

Hi LWR,

That Indian doctor you communicated to must have been a Muslim, as Sikander is the persian/muslim version of name Alexander. I cannot recall any of the Hindus/Sikhs from my region, who had a name Sikander but i do know for a fact that this is a very common name amongst the Muslims.
For e.g. Shazia Sikander, Sardool Sikander.

We too have a singer in Punjab (India) who is a Muslim and his full name is "Sardool Sikander".


Meaning of "Sikander":
- A person who is acting untowardly or selfish towards his or her comrades or associates.

Thanks Khalsa for your reply..
Interesting to know it is more common in the Muslims then the other religions in that region...

Also it is interesting to note that everybody apart from the Greeks says, Aleksandar - In Asia as Iskandar or Sikandar, and never Iskandros, Sikandros, etc. You would think, as a foreigner hearing the name of "Alexandros" for the first time, that it would be similar, ie; with an "os" suffix at least. But that is not the case.
Another Fact exposing the Greek lies...

[THE KHALSA]

Battle of Hydaspes (Alexander & Porus)

Guys, discovered some intersting information for us:


Current photo of Jhelum river(anciently known as Hydaspes) now in Punjab, Pakistan,where Alexander and Porus (Indian King) met for the battle of Hydaspes.



When the Macedonian King Alexander the Great arrived in India in the spring of 326, he was welcomed by Omphis, the king of Taxila (Takshaçila, near modern Rawalpindi, Pakistan), another kingdom in the Punjab and Porus' archenemy. To Porus, the arrival of the westerners was a great threat: after all, it was obvious that Omphis would use his allies in a war against Paurava.

However, for the time being, he seemed safe, because the approaching monsoon rains would make it impossible to cross the Hydaspes. Therefore, he refused to send envoys to Taxila to offer tokens of submission. In May, the Macedonian army started to march to the Hydaspes.

[Onur]

Thanks Khalsa for your reply..
Interesting to know it is more common in the Muslims then the other religions in that region...

It`s also a common male name in Turkey as "Iskender" and a surname as "Iskenderoglu, Iskenderli" etc.

For example, you probably know the Turkish doner kebab. In 1800s, a guy named "Iskender" created a form of doner kebab to serve it in plates and since then, whenever we order doner kebab in plates instead of fast-food style, we call it "Iskender doner"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C4%B0skender_Efendi

[Prolet]

Onur, I eat Iskender Kebap in Turkish Restaurants all the time its very good.

[Soldier of Macedon]

When the Macedonian King Alexander the Great arrived in India in the spring of 326, he was welcomed by Omphis, the king of Taxila (Takshaçila, near modern Rawalpindi, Pakistan), another kingdom in the Punjab and Porus' archenemy. To Porus, the arrival of the westerners was a great threat: after all, it was obvious that Omphis would use his allies in a war against Paurava.

However, for the time being, he seemed safe, because the approaching monsoon rains would make it impossible to cross the Hydaspes. Therefore, he refused to send envoys to Taxila to offer tokens of submission. In May, the Macedonian army started to march to the Hydaspes.

Thanks for the information Khalsa, very interesting. Given that you're background is from that general area, you could be very helpful in locating information on certain historical places, landmarks, monuments, etc, that relate to the campaign and travels of the Macedonians through parts of Northern India and today's Pakistan.

Perhaps many of our MTO readers here are unaware, but the Punjab region is much greater in land mass than the current borders of the Punjab state in India. Indeed, much of Pakistan is also historically Punjabi, and several of the key locations of historical significance to the Punjabis and Sikhs are currently found within the borders of Pakistan. During the period that led to the creation of an Islamic state (Pakistan) that was carved out of greater Indian territory, many innocent Sikhs, Hindus and Muslims were displaced from their ancestral homes, the situation being so extreme that it triggered a mass exodus of Muslims from India and of Hindus and Sikhs from the territory that came to be Pakistan.

The historically cultural and religious centre of the Sikhs, known as Lahore, is today located in Pakistan.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sikhism_in_Pakistan

Sikhism in Pakistan has an extensive heritage and history, although Sikhs form a very small community in the Islamic Republic today. Most Sikhs live in the province of Punjab, where the religion was born in the middle ages. Nankana Sahib, the birthplace of Guru Nanak, the founder of Sikhism, is located in the Pakistani province.

In the 18th and 19th centuries, the Sikh community became a powerful political force, with Sikh leader Ranjit Singh founding the first Sikh empire, which had its capital in Lahore, the second-largest city in Pakistan today. Significant populations of Sikhs inhabited the largest cities in the Punjab such as Lahore, Rawalpindi and Lyallpur (now Faisalabad), as well as the neighbouring Northwest Frontier Province. However, when India was partitioned in 1947 to create the Muslim state of Pakistan, a significant portion of the Punjab region became part of the new state. Ethnic cleansing of Hindus and Sikhs led to a major exodus of those communities from Pakistan into India; conversely Muslims in the Indian territory were subject to the same ethnic cleansing and forced migration to Pakistan. Large numbers of Sikh places of worship (gurdwaras) were destroyed and hundreds of thousands of Sikhs were killed.

In the decades following Pakistan's creation, the Sikh community began to re-organise, forming the Pakistan Sikh Gurdwara Prabandhak Committee (PGPC) to represent the community and protect the holy sites and heritage of the Sikh religion in Pakistan. The Pakistani government has begun to allow Sikhs from India to make pilgrimages to Sikh places of worship in Pakistan and for Pakistani Sikhs to travel to India.