Alexander won the field, but Puru kept his throne and gained more land as an ally.
01The night crossing
Puru held the far bank of the swollen river with his elephants, and for days Alexander could not cross. Arrian says he finally crossed upstream at night in a thunderstorm, leaving a force opposite Puru’s camp. Puru’s son rode out with chariots and was killed in the mud. In the main battle the elephants trampled Macedonian ranks before they were driven back. Puru, wounded and fighting from his elephant to the end, was brought before Alexander. Asked how he wished to be treated, he answered: like a king. Arrian records the reply.
02Halt at the Beas
Alexander returned Puru’s kingdom and added land to it. He went on to the Hyphasis, the Beas, and there his soldiers would go no further. Plutarch says the battle with Puru had blunted their nerve, and that word of the great armies of the Gangaridai and Prasii beyond, the Nanda realm of Magadha, finished it. Within a few years Chandragupta Maurya had cleared the Greek garrisons from the Punjab.
It was the hardest battle Alexander fought in India, and the eastward march ended a few months after it.