Indian Architecture (Buddhist and Hindu Periods) c14.7

c14.7

There is little doubt that had this forward policy of penetration eastward persisted, and concerted action taken, the decaying Mauryan empire of India would have fallen an easy prey to the victorious Asiatic Greeks, with a possibility of the entire country becoming Hellenized. But it is also fairly clear that, owing to long separation from their native land, their stamina had deteriorated and their staying power was sapped, so that the limit of their attainment had been reached. Dissensions among themselves, the division of the newly conquered territory into a number or petty principalities, increasing pressure from the Parthians, and the menace of the ever-advancing nomadic tribes, all combined to make their position insecure. The beginning of the final phase came in 125 B C. when Bactria itself, the original Greek stronghold, was overwhelmed by the Scythians, a Mongolian horde which was sweeping down from the north. Forced out of their homeland by this disaster, the Bactrian Greeks became confined to their more recently acquired possessions in the Indus valley and the Punjab, which they administered from Sakala, the modern town of Sialkot, but with much diminished power and prestige. Gradually compressed within a territory of ever-narrowing limits, they lingered on until A.D. 60, when the whole country was devastated by the relentless onslaught of the Scythians, who eventually founded the Indo-Scythian empire of the Kushans (A.D. 20-225). With this invasion the last vestiges of Greek rule in India disappeared.