The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c26.303

v1.c26.303

He is the last king of India whose money is found to the north of the Hindu Kush. Clearly, therefore, it was in his reign that Bactria was abandoned to the Çakas. This was probably not later than 135 b.c. What the condition of the country then became, is wholly doubtful. The language used of the Ta-hia by Chang-kien, the Chinese envoy, is interpreted by some as indicating that they were largely left to themselves by the intruders, and that they did not acknowledge the authority of a central government at all. But here again we are in the realm of conjecture. Our only definite evidence for Heliocles is numismatic, and the inferences of which it admits are scanty. The characteristic type on his Attic silver is Zeus, generally standing to front, grasping a thunderbolt and leaning on a long sceptre, the inscription being ΒΑΣΙΛΕΩΣ ΔΙΚΑΙΟΥ ΗΛΙΟΚΛΕΟΥΣ (Pl. IV, 8). Very rare tetradrachms and drachms combine a helmeted bust on the obverse with a seated figure of the god on the reverse. The standing Zeus re-appears on bilingual coins of Indo-Persic weight and of markedly different style. These are sufficiently common to show the diminishing importance of the Bactrian part of Heliocles’s kingdom, and the corresponding advance of the purely Indian element. With the exception of Apollodotus and Antialcidas, he is the last of the Graeco-Indian rulers to employ the Attic standard at all. He also re-strikes the coins of Agathocleia reigning conjointly with her son Strato I Soter, an indication no doubt that the internecine struggle between the house of Eucratides and the house of Euthydemus which had begun in Bactria was continued in India. Finally, a faint memory of his name must have lingered on among the barbarian immigrants long after the day when he fled before their approach. Once settled in the midst of a nation of shop-keepers, the nomads speedily learned that a coinage was indispensable. To provide it they had recourse to rude imitations of the money of their Greek predecessors, and their most popular models were the bronze of Heliocles and the silver of Euthydemus. Their currency thus supplies a pathetic epilogue to the story of the rise and fall of the Greek kingdom of Bactria. The annals of Hellas abound in episodes as rich in romance as any tale the Middle Ages ever wove. Nothing they contain is more calculated to appeal to the imagination than the fortunes of these heirs of the great Alexander. That their civilisation was a brilliant one, we may safely conclude from the quality of the art displayed upon their coins. The pity of it is that the store of facts for the reconstruction of their history is so slender. The surmises are many, and the certainties are few. Excavation may mend matters some day. Until then the utmost limit of possible achievement is to sketch a rough outline that shall not be inconsistent with such scattered fragments of evidence as survive.