Nicaea or Nikaia was a city in what is now the Punjab, one of the two cities founded by Alexander the Great on opposite sides of the Hydaspesriver. The second city founded by Alexander on the Hydaspes was Bucephala. It was at Nicaea or Bucephalia, which appears to have been on the opposite bank, that Alexander built the fleet which Nearchus subsequently commanded, the country in the immediate neighbourhood having abundance of wood fit for shipbuilding. Following the Battle of the Hydaspes, Alexander founded two cities. One of the sites of the battle he named Alexandria Niceae meaning Victory. The site of that city is still undetermined. Any attempt to find the ancient battle site is doomed, because the landscape has changed considerably. A reference to Nicaea may appear in the Mūlasarvāstivāda Vinaya, a Buddhist text of the early centuries AD. This text refers to two cities called Ādirājya and Bhadrāśva located on the Vitastā River along the road from Gandhāra to Mathurā. The Buddhists attributed these two cities to the mythical kingMahāsammata, but some modern scholars propose to identify them as the two cities founded by Alexander the Great, Nicaea and Bucephala. A number of candidates have been put forward for the location:
For the moment, the most plausible location is just south of the city ofJhelum, where the ancient main road crossed the river, and where a Buddhist source indeed mentions a city that may be Nicaea. Huntingford identifies this Alexandria with a large mound west of Jhelum city, while Lendering cites Jhelum in more general terms.
The nineteenth-century British traveller Alexander Burnes, visiting the region in 1831, suggests the "extensive ruins called Oodeenuggur" 15 miles south of Jhelum are the remains of Nicaea, with a mound at Mong on the opposite bank of the Hydapses being the site of Bucephalia.
Alexander Cunningham, writing in 1871 was in support of Mong as the site of the town and wrote "The old ruined mound on which Mong is situated is 600 feet long by 400 feet broad and 50 feet high and is visible for many miles on all sides. It contains 975 houses built of large old bricks and 5000 inhabitants who are mainly Jats. The old wells are very numerous, their exact number according to my information being 175... Coins of all the Indo-Scythian princes are found at Mong in considerable numbers, and I see no reason to doubt that the place is as old as Alexander.
The identification of the battle site near modern Jalalpur/Haranpur is certainly erroneous, as the river, in the ancient times, meandered far from these cities.
