WI Xerxes I invades India?

Suppose that when Athens and Sparta receive Persian ambassadors requesting Earth and Water, they politely refuse instead of killing them. So that after the catastrophe of Marathon Darius decides that only having punished Eretria suffices to scare off the Greeks from causing further trouble.

Then later when Xerxes ascends on the throne and starts looking for a way to prove himself he decides to go after the riches of India, instead of a miserable country filled narrow mountain passes and isthmuses. How far can he go? (Both military and logistically)

(Alternatively if you think hoplites pressed into military service might be of use in India, it could take place after a quick and easy conquest of Greece (if say it were the Greeks who had the bad luck of their fleet being hit twice by a storm and then threw their remainder into an ambush))


I know nearly nothing about India in this time expect it was in the Mahajanapada period, so how would the Persians fare against the Indians?

Also looking at a map there weren't any great realms (not already conquered by Cyrus) to the west of Avanti. So might Xerxes conquer up to Gujarat without meeting resistance of any large realm? But then Xerxes would probably be too ambitious to satisfy himself with such small gains considering, he you know build a canal and a pontoon bridge solely to invade Greece.
 
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The nanda empire smashes the persian army. It has a massive standing army and better elephants and doctrine to use them. The persian army will have to cross the hindu kush which would kill alot of his troops.
 
But I thought the Nanda dynasty was only in power after 346 BCE (or maybe 424 BCE as that's what my historical encyclopaedia says).
Whilst Xerxes invaded Greece in 480 BCE, though his invasion of India might take place later if Darius hadn't yet started whit its preparations.

EDIT: Also you mentioned the Kush but as Persia already controls the westbank of the Indus shouldn't they be able to go via to coast, or if necesary use boats.
 
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So assuming the Persians succeed in conquering the east bank of the Indus (thanks to the Nanda empire not yet existing), would that territory be a net gain or a burden to the empire?
I'd recall both that the piece of India they controlled was the most profitable satrapy of the empire and that it was so difficult to hold into that they no longer controlled it by the time of Alexander, so I guess it could go either way.

However if the Achaemenids have a more eastward focus they might do things which make holding the Indus valley easier, like expanding the royal roads across the Indus river. Plus they might be in a better shape overall without the disastrous losses after Xerxes failed invasion of Greece.
 
'I know nearly nothing about India in this time"

Neither does anyone else, including specialists on Indian history!

This is a major plot point in the underrated historical novel "Creation" by Gore Vidal. The main character is sent to India on a reconnaissance mission as a prelude to a Persian invasion and is disappointed that they went to Greece instead.

Was this a serious option? Some considerations:

1. The Achaemenids seem to have established a couple of satrapies in "India" which historians assume to be what is now Pakistan. This is the area where Alexander campaigned in, and as he saw himself as the heir to the Achaemenids he probably thought he was just re-establishing their borders. Our information comes mainly from a passage in the history of Herodotus. Keep in mind that pre printing press and sail empires were much more decentralized than we are used to, and the Persian ones were more decentralized even by classical standards, and the Satrap was just someone who collected tribute and sometimes raised troops in his assigned area. And the Persians seem to have been able to do that from part of India, know one knows how big an area or for how long, so the short answer is Xerxes in fact did conquer India.

2. If you have them taking more of India, you run into the problem that before advances in communications and transportation tech (first printing press and sail, then steam transportation and telegraph and its derivatives) there was a limit on the size of empires due to practical administrative considerations. And if you conquered the Punjab and Ganges from Central Asia, what wound you happening is that your empire would split or you would lose either the Central Asian portion or the Indian portion. It already was a problem for the Achaemenids that their population centers were on the opposite ends of the empire (Punjab and Egypt/ Ionia). They had enough problems trying to hold onto Egypt and ionia, that are well documented and you get the impression that their IOTL boundaries were as far as they could have gotten.

3. As with India, Xerxes already held a good deal of Greece if you remember that Ionia was part of Greece and arguably the most important part, plus various Aegean islands and the fact that many of the peninsular Greek states, notably Macedon at the time, were willing to play ball. So there was a rationale to get into peninsular Greece if you are going to secure Ionia, to at least slap around the more hostile city states and maybe install friendlier regimes, even if you couldn't set up another satrapy.

The invasion of Greece became a big deal because Xerxes went there himself, and ancient Greek civilization was at its height and it was recorded in literally the first western written histories and historical plays (and at the time, really only the Chinese were recording their historical events in written form). Its an interesting POD if they just kept doing lower level raids and bribery to manage the Greeks, maybe they would not have proved Alexander's expedition later. Again, we know nothing about how they managed whatever they held in India.
 
I'd recall both that the piece of India they controlled was the most profitable satrapy of the empire and that it was so difficult to hold into that they no longer controlled it by the time of Alexander, so I guess it could go either way.

It was the most profitable according to Herodotus, although the amount of tribute he assigns it (360 talents of gold dust) seems implausibly large. Personally I incline to the view that Herodotus has misinterpreted his source, and that the Indian satrapy actually paid 360 (silver) talents' worth of tribute, with gold dust being the medium in which this tribute was paid. This wouldn't actually make India anywhere near the most profitable satrapy (that would be Babylon, which paid 1,000 talents in tribute; cf. Hdt. 3.92), but since the Persians only ever occupied a small portion of India it'd be surprising if their satrapy there was particularly profitable.
 
It was the most profitable according to Herodotus, although the amount of tribute he assigns it (360 talents of gold dust) seems implausibly large. Personally I incline to the view that Herodotus has misinterpreted his source, and that the Indian satrapy actually paid 360 (silver) talents' worth of tribute, with gold dust being the medium in which this tribute was paid. This wouldn't actually make India anywhere near the most profitable satrapy (that would be Babylon, which paid 1,000 talents in tribute; cf. Hdt. 3.92), but since the Persians only ever occupied a small portion of India it'd be surprising if their satrapy there was particularly profitable.

But don’t forget the Achaemenid occupation was of Gandhara and Kamboja, a set of particularly rich regions that contained perhaps one of the largest cities on the Indian subcontinent at the time: Taxila. It also held great cultural value to them as the Zend Avesta lists the region as one of Ahura Mazda’s favoured creations.

As for the rest of India, if the Persians do continue to try to penetrate deeper into the Indo-Gangetic plains they will be met by a Kuru-Panchala kingdom that is reeling but not dead. If the Persians end up being logistically overburdened the Kurus can defeat them and the power base of Aryavarta will stop moving eastward to Magadha and recent republican around the Kuru Kingdom. If they manage to hold suzerainty over Gandhara, a lot of the innovations the Persians bought with them can be adopted.
 
But don’t forget the Achaemenid occupation was of Gandhara and Kamboja, a set of particularly rich regions that contained perhaps one of the largest cities on the Indian subcontinent at the time: Taxila. It also held great cultural value to them as the Zend Avesta lists the region as one of Ahura Mazda’s favoured creations.

They certainly were, but Herodotus' figures would make India alone contribute almost a third of the Persian king's annual tribute income (4,680/14,560 talents), and be over twice times as wealthy as Egypt and Babylon combined (which contributed 940 + 1,000 talents annually) which seems pretty implausible IMHO.
 
They certainly were, but Herodotus' figures would make India alone contribute almost a third of the Persian king's annual tribute income (4,680/14,560 talents), and be over twice times as wealthy as Egypt and Babylon combined (which contributed 940 + 1,000 talents annually) which seems pretty implausible IMHO.
It's very tricky to work out, especially since there's such a disparity in value between gold and silver. 360 Silver Talents would mean the Achaemenids exacted less tribute from India than Athens did from the Delian league, less defeated Carthage did from Lepcis, and about on par with Rhodes' annual revenue. These are fairly rich cities, but you'd think there'd be a lot more wealth to be extracted from one of the wealthiest agricultural regions in the ancient world.
 
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