The Beginnings of Buddhist Art and Other Essays in Indian and Central-Asian Archaeology c8.22

c8.22

Fifty years later Demetrios, son of Euthydemos, profiting by the break-up of the empire of the Mauryas, conquers and annexes the whole of northern India; and immediately you see in that helmet, made from the head of an elephant, as it were a trace of the Indian orientation of his policy (pl. XIV, 2). This latter must, besides, have ended by costing him his original kingdom. Another valiant condottiere, Eukratides, rebelled in his turn, and made himself master of Bactria; so that, as Strabo tells us, there remained to Demetrios nothing more than his Indian conquests, and he was henceforward known under the name of « King of the Indians ». This is a capital fact, to which I could not too strongly draw your attention. During a century and more the Panjâb was thus a Greek colony, in the same way as it afterwards became Scythian, then Mogul, and finally English. That is to say, a handful of foreigners, supported by mercenary troops, in great part recruited in the country itself, became masters there, and levied the taxes. You may easily perceive that this kingdom was a centre of attraction for Greek adventurers of all kinds, beginning with soldiers of fortune and mountebanks, and passing by way of merchants to the artists who took upon themselves, among other tasks, that of making the superb coins to which we are indebted for the survival of the classically sounding names and the energetic features of those so-called « Basileis », changed into very authentic râjahs.