The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c25.199

v1.c25.199

The contact of India with the Greek world did not cease with the disruption of Alexander’s empire. What can be traced of later political connexions between Indian and Hellenistic kings will be exhibited in another chapter. Any influences which can ultimately be shown to have reached India from the Greek West, whether through the medium of Seleucid or Bactrian kings or of the Roman Empire, which took up the inheritance of Hellenism in Asia, may be regarded as consequences of the work of Alexander. If they were not consequences of the work which Alexander did in India, they were, in any case, consequences of the work which he did when he established Hellenism in Irān, Syria, Asia Minor, and Egypt. India indeed and the Greek world only touched each other on their fringes, and there was never a chance for elements of the Hellenistic tradition to strike root in India, as a part of Hellenism struck root in the Nearer East and was still vital in the Muhammadan, largely Hellenistic, culture of the Middle Ages. There are, however, the two unquestionable cases of transmission, which will be noted in subsequent chapters—the artistic types conveyed by the school of Gandhāra, and the Greek astronomy which superseded the primitive native system in the latter part of the fourth century a.d.