The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c30.s2: The House of Euthydemus
The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c30.s2
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The House of Euthydemus
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The princes of the house of Euthydemus who reigned both in Bactria and in kingdoms south of the Hindu Kush are Demetrius, Pantaleon, Agathocles, and probably also Antimachus.
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Of these Demetrius alone is known to the Greek historians¹, whose statements as to his Indian conquests are confirmed, though scarcely supplemented, by the evidence of coins. The district, in which his bilingual square copper coins were struck, has not been determined; and all that can be said of his round coins, with types 'Elephant's head: Caduceus' and Greek legend only, is that they were directly copied by the Çaka king Maues, and that they must therefore have been in circulation in the lower Kābul valley or in N.W. India (Pl. VI, 1, 2).
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¹ Chapter XVII, pp. 445-7.
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Pantaleon and Agathocles were undoubtedly closely connected, since they struck coins which are identical in type and form. These were borrowed from the earlier native currency which prevailed generally in the Paropanisadae and Gandhāra. From a general consideration of the *provenance* of their coins, which are found in Kābul, Ghazni, and Kandahār, Cunningham concluded that Pantaleon and Agathocles must have ruled over the Western Paropanisadae and Arachosia (*N.Chr.*, 1869, p. 41). They would seem therefore to represent the south-western extension of the Yavana power.
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The commemorative medals struck by Antimachus show that he claimed to be the successor of Diodotus and Euthydemus; but there is nothing to indicate his relation to Agathocles who makes the same claim. The two princes may have been ruling at the same period in different kingdoms. From the recorded discoveries of the Indian coins of Antimachus, Cunningham inferred that he ruled in the lower Kābul valley (the districts of Jalālābād and Peshāwar). The reverse type in which the king is represented on a prancing horse and wearing a flat cap (*kausia*), as on the obverse of the large silver Bactrian coins, is evidently a portrait; and the same type is continued on the coins of Philoxenus, Nicias, and Hippostratus, who may have succeeded to the kingdom of Antimachus. But if these four princes really ruled over the same kingdom, its locality must be sought rather in the country of the Jhelum than in the lower Kābul valley. The coins of Philoxenus are found only to the east of Jalālābād (B.M. Cat., p. xxxviii), and those of Nicias only in the Jhelum District (Smith, *Early Hist. of Ind.*, 3rd ed., p. 243); while the types ‘Apollo: Tripod’ which are also struck by Hippostratus seem undoubtedly, in later times, to have been confined to the eastern districts of the Punjab (p. 552). The occurrence of the type ‘King on prancing horse’ on the joint coins of Hermaeus and Calliope may, as Cunningham suggested, indicate the union of two royal houses.
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The Bactrian and Indian coins of Antimachus with their types ‘Poseidon’ and ‘Victory’ must refer to a naval triumph; and it is difficult to explain the allusion except on the supposition that this king had won a victory on one of the great Indian rivers—the Indus or the Jhelum.
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Numismatists usually distinguish between an earlier Antimachus I Θεός and a later Antimachus II Νικηφόρος (Pl. VI, 3); but it seems more probable that the coins assigned to these are merely the Bactrian and the Indian issues of the same monarch. The two classes are connected by their types; and the difference between them may well be local rather than chronological. They represent the workmanship of districts separated by some hundreds of miles and dissimilar in culture. They find their parallels in the coinages of other Graeco-Indian kings, viz. Demetrius, Eucratides, and Heliocles. Like the title Ἀνίκητος, which is borne by Demetrius, the Νικηφόρος of Antimachus has reference to Indian conquests and is not found on the coins struck in Bactria.
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Of the Yavana princes who ruled only to the south of the Hindu Kush, Apollodotus would seem to have been the first. He is twice mentioned by ancient authors, and on both occasions in association with Menander. From such evidence as is forthcoming we may reasonably conclude that the two princes were members of the family of Euthydemus, that they belong to the same period—the period of Yavana expansion—and that Apollodotus was the elder.
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The copper coins of Apollodotus bear types ‘Apollo: Tripod’ in evident allusion to the king’s name (Pl. VI, 4). These were re-struck by Eucratides with his own types in the kingdom of Kāpiça (Kāfiristān) immediately to the south of the Hindu Kush (p. 555; Pl. VII, 36). The types of the silver coins, ‘Elephant: Indian bull’ (Pl. VI, 7) which may have symbolised the tutelary divinities of cities, are commonly found on the earlier native coinages of the N.W., and the Indian bull is more particularly characteristic of Pushkalāvatī (Chārsadda) in the Peshāwar District (p. 557). These types continued to be struck by Heliocles (Pl. VI, 8). The coins thus show most clearly the transference of the upper and lower Kābul valleys from one Yavana house to the other, and they determine the date of Apollodotus I: he was, like Demetrius, the contemporary of Eucratides, who was the predecessor of Heliocles.
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From their home in the N.W. the coins of Apollodotus were carried far and wide into other regions. Such distribution may manifestly be the result either of conquest or of commerce: it is therefore no certain indication of the limits of a king’s dominions. But in this case numismatic evidence of the kind may well be adduced to confirm the statement preserved by Strabo, that Yavana rule extended on the south-west to Ariāna and on the south to the Indus delta and Western India. Cunningham observed that, while coins of Apollodotus are found in Arachosia (Ghaznī and Kandahār) and in Drangiāna (Seistān), those of Menander do not occur in these regions; and from this fact he inferred that these provinces of Ariāna were lost to the house of Euthydemus during the reign of Apollodotus and before the reign of Menander (*N. Chr.*, 1869, p. 146). They would appear to have come successively under the sway of Eucratides and of Mithradates¹. That Menander did not rule in Ariāna seems certain. He is associated rather with the eastern Punjab (p. 549); and in this region he may have been reigning contemporaneously with Apollodotus in the N.W. and in Ariāna.
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¹ Chapter XVII, p. 457.
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The memory of Apollodotus and Menander was preserved in Western India by their coins, which, according to the author of the *Periplus of the Erythraean Sea* (§ 47), were still in circulation in the last quarter of the first century A.D. at Barugaza (Broach). But Yavana rule had long ago ceased in this region. Early in the first century B.C. the country of the lower Indus had passed into the possession of the Çaka invaders from Seistān².
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² Chapter XXIII, pp. 564, 570.
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After the conquests of Eucratides and Heliocles the dominions of the house of Euthydemus were confined to those districts of the Punjab which lie to the east of the Jhelum, that is to say, to the old kingdoms of Alexander’s first and second Paurava, and to the region beyond. Here the types of Apollodotus, ‘Apollo : Tripod,’ were continued by Strato I, by the Çaka king Maues, and, with some modification in the representation both of Apollo and the Tripod, by Apollodotus II Philopator, Dionysius, Zoilus, and Hippostratus (Pl. VI, 5, 6, and *Summary*, p. 587).
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Menander is the only Yavana who has become celebrated in the ancient literature of India. He is unquestionably to be identified with Milinda, the Yavana king of Çākala (Siālkot), who is one of the two leading characters in the Milindapañha, the ‘Questions of Milinda,’ a Pāli treatise on the fundamental principles of Buddhist philosophy. It is in the form of a dialogue between the king, who had become notorious as ‘harassing the brethren by putting puzzles to them of heretical tendency,’ and the Buddhist elder, Nāgasena, who triumphantly solves these puzzles and succeeds in converting his royal antagonist. It is thus as a philosopher, and not as a mighty conqueror, that Menander, like Janamejaya, king of the Kurus, and Janaka, king of Videha, in the Upanishads, has won for himself an abiding fame.
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As a disputant he was hard to equal, harder still to overcome; the acknowledged superior of all the founders of the various schools of thought. As in wisdom so in strength of body, swiftness, and valour there was found none equal to Milinda in all India. He was rich too, mighty in wealth and prosperity, and the number of his armed hosts knew no end. (Trans. Rhys Davids, *S.B.E.* XXXV, pp. 6, 7.)
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The capital is described in the same somewhat conventional style in a passage which begins:
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There is, in the country of the Yonakas, a great centre of trade, a city that is called Sāgala, situated in a delightful country, abounding in parks and gardens and groves and lakes and tanks, a paradise of rivers and mountains and woods. (*Ibid.* p. 2.)
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Little is said which might not apply to any other important city lying on the great high road of N. India¹. For more precise information we must seek elsewhere.
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¹ In the Jain literature such conventional descriptions of persons and places have attained to their complete logical development: they have become stereotyped, and are to be supplied in each fresh instance from the bare stage direction, *vaṇṇo*, ‘the description as before.’
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Çākala was a city of the Madras, who are mentioned in the Bṛihadāraṇyaka Upanishad (III, 3, 1; 7, 1) probably as early as 600 B.C., and who appear in the epics to occupy the district of Siālkot between the rivers Chenāb and Rāvi. Here Alexander found the second Paurava king, whose dominions he annexed to the satrapy of his relation and rival, the great Paurava, who ruled over the adjacent territory between the Jhelum and the Chenāb. We may conclude then that the kings of the Madras claimed to be Pūrus, and that their dominions together with their capital, Çākala, twice passed under the sway of the Yavanas—under Alexander and under his successor, Menander. At a later date, in the early part of the sixth century A.D., Çākala became the capital of the Hūṇa conqueror, Mihirakula¹.
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¹ Chapter XV, p. 370; *Vedic Index*, II, p. 123; Pargiter, *Mārk. Pur.* pp. 315-6; Fleet, *Trans. Inter. Gr. Cong.*, Algiers, 1905, I, pp. 164 ff.
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At his meetings with Nāgasena, the king is attended by his five hundred Greek (Yonaka) courtiers, some of whom bear Greek names which have been slightly Indianised; and, as the chief of these courtiers were no doubt related to the royal family which traced its origin to Bactria, it is not surprising to find among them a Demetrius (Devamantiya) and an Antiochus (Anantakāya).
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In the illustrations which are brought to bear on the philosophical topics under discussion, certain facts of a more general interest emerge. Milinda, it appears, was born at the village of Kalasi in the *dvīpa* of Alasanda. Kalasi cannot be identified; but the *dvīpa* of Alasanda is no doubt the district of Alexandria-under-the-Caucasus—Alasanda of the Yonas, as it is called in the Mahāvaṁsa (XXIX, 39). Translators have persistently rendered *dvīpa* by 'island,' and have thus added to the difficulties of identifying the site; but this is only one of the meanings of this word, which often denotes the land lying between two rivers—the Persian *duāb*: the district of Çākala, for example, in the Rechna Doāb between the Chenāb and the Rāvi, is often called *Çākala-dvīpa*. There is no reason therefore why the term *Alasanda-dvīpa* should not be applied to the country between the Panjshir and Kābul rivers, in which the ruins of Alexander's city have been recognised near Chārikār. No other of the numerous Alexandrias has an equal claim to the honour of being Menander's birthplace, which, in reply to Nāgasena's question, the king himself describes as being 200 *yojanas* distant from Çākala. The *yojana* has very different values according to the period and the locality in which it is used; but there is good evidence of the use in Buddhist books of a short *yojana*, equal to about two and a half English miles; and an estimate of 500 miles for the route from Chārikār to Siālkot seems to be fairly correct (p. 543). The statement thus incidentally preserved by the Milindapañha has the appearance of truth. Some branch of the family of Euthydemus would naturally be settled in the district, which was strategically important as constituting the connecting link between Bactria and India, and we may reasonably conclude that Menander, like Apollodotus, belonged to this branch.
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Menander's fame as a great and just ruler was not confined to India. Some two centuries after his time Plutarch recounted to the Greek world the story how, after his death in camp, the cities of his realm contended for the honour of preserving his ashes and agreed on a division among themselves, in order that the memory of his reign should not be lost. The story is evidently derived from some Buddhist source; for, as Prinsep first pointed out, it is a reminiscence of the story of the distribution of Buddha's ashes¹.
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¹ Plutarch, *Praecepta gerendae reipublicae* (*Moralia*, 821, D); Prinsep's *Essays*, ed. Thomas, I, pp. 50, 171.
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The coins of Menander show a greater variety of types and are distributed over a wider area than those of any other Graeco-Indian ruler. They are found not only in the Kābul valley and the Punjab, but also in the western districts of the United Provinces. There can be no doubt that Menander was the ruler over many kingdoms and that he was a great conqueror. It was most probably under his leadership that the Yavana armies invaded the Midland Country (p. 544). The statement, that the expedition was recalled on account of the war which had broken out between the Yavanas themselves in their own country, is in accordance with what may be inferred as to his date. Menander and Eucratides were almost certainly contemporary. Some of their square copper coins are so similar in style that they may reasonably be assigned not only to the same general period, but also to the same region—a region which must have passed from one rule to the other (Pl. VI, 13, 14).
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The numismatic record of Menander is unusually full, but it is at the same time extraordinarily difficult to interpret. Few, if any, of his types can be attributed to the different cities in which they were struck. The most plausible suggestions are that the 'Ox-head' (Pl. VI, 17) may represent Bucephala, and the figure of 'Victory' (Pl. VI, 15; continued on the coins of Strato, Pl. VI, 16) Nicaea, the two cities which Alexander founded on the Jhelum in the realm of Porus².
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² Chapter xv, p. 368.
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The period is one of great historical complexity. The house of Euthydemus, after a career of conquest under Demetrius, Apollodotus, and Menander, was engaged in a struggle, under the same leaders, to maintain its newly won possessions against the encroachments of the house of Eucratides. Coins can only have preserved a few indications of the kaleidoscopic changes which must from time to time have taken place in the political situation. Nevertheless, their evidence clearly illustrates some of the main results of the struggle. They show unmistakably that the dominions of the house of Euthydemus in the Kābul valley and in both western and eastern Gandhāra (Pushkalāvatī and Takshaçilā) had passed into the hands of Eucratides (pp. 555 f.) and his immediate successors Heliocles (pp. 556 f.) and Antialcidas (pp. 558 f.). It is in the region which lies to the south and east of the Rāwalpindi District that we must seek henceforth the remnants of the house of Euthydemus. Here Apollodotus appears to be represented by Apollodotus II Philopator, and Menander by Agathocleia and her son Strato.
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The types which these families continue to use in the eastern Punjab, and which are especially characteristic of the house of Euthydemus, are chiefly two: (1) the types of Apollodotus, ‘Apollo: Tripod’ (Pl. VI, 4)—Strato I (Pl. VI, 5), and, with some modification in the types which appears to indicate a later date, Apollodotus II (Pl. VI, 6), Dionysius, Zoilus, Hippostratus (*Summary*, p. 587); and (2) the type of Menander, ‘Athene Promachos’ (Pl. VII, 18)—Agathocleia and Strato (Pl. VII, 19), Strato I (Pl. VII, 20, 21 and *Summary*, p. 588), Apollodotus II (Pl. VII, 22), Dionysius, Zoilus, Apollophanes (*Summary*, p. 589), Strato I and II (Pl. VII, 23).
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In the long and distinguished list of queens who have ruled in India must be included the name of Agathocleia. Her relation to Menander cannot be proved very definitely; but it is by no means improbable that she was his queen and the governor of his kingdom after his death¹. The fact that she struck coins on which her portrait appears together with the type of Euthydemus, ‘Heracles seated,’ shows that she was a princess in her own right and a member of the royal house; and her name suggests that she may have belonged to the family of Pantaleon and Agathocles (p. 546). She was undoubtedly the mother of Strato I Soter².
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¹ The evidence, such as it is, is as follows:—(1) The ‘bust of Athena helmeted’ which appears on coins of Menander (Pl. VI, 15) is perhaps a portrait of Agathocleia, like the similar bust on coins which she strikes in association with Strato (Pl. VII, 25); (2) the figure of a warrior king on the reverse of certain coins struck by Agathocleia during Strato’s minority and bearing her own portrait may be supposed to represent the late king (*Corolla Numismatica*, Pl. XII, 4): a similar figure occurs as the obverse type on coins of Menander, where it is most naturally explained as that of Menander himself (Lahore Cat., Pl. VI, 515).
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² For the detailed proof see Rapson in *Corolla Numismatica* (Oxford, 1908), pp. 247–51.
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The coins issued by Agathocleia in association with her son, and by Strato ruling at first alone and afterwards in association with his grandson, Strato II Philopator, supply the most valuable evidence for the reconstruction of the history and chronology of this period. They mark most clearly various stages in the long life of Strato. They begin at a time when the conquests of the house of Eucratides had not yet reached their limit; and they end on the eve of the complete overthrow of Yavana power in the eastern Punjab by the Çakas.
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On the earliest of these coins Agathocleia appears as queen regent holding the place of honour with her portrait and Greek inscription on the obverse, while the Kharoshṭhī legend of the young prince occupies a subordinate position on the reverse (Pl. VII, 25). Afterwards, the combined portraits of mother and son declare their association in the government (Pl. VII, 19); and, later still, a series of portraits shows Strato first reigning alone—as a youth (Pl. VII, 20), or as a bearded man (Pl. VII, 21)—and then in advanced old age, with toothless jaws and sunken cheeks, both, as the Kharoshṭhī legends indicate, reigning alone (*Summary*, p. 588) and in association with his grandson, Strato II Philopator (Pl. VII, 23). To judge from these portraits, we have here glimpses of a life of more than seventy years. Between the earliest and the latest there is indeed a long interval, and to some period in this interval must be assigned the reigns of Apollodotus II Philopator, Dionysius, and Zoilus. They are associated by their common use of a peculiar monogram (Pl. VII, 22 and *Summary*, p. 589); and it is probable that they were all descendants of Apollodotus I. Apollophanes, whose name suggests that he may have been a member of the same family, must belong to the period represented by the latest coins of Strato.
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Coins of Agathocleia and Strato (Pl. VII, 25), and others of Strato reigning alone (Pl. VI, 16), are sometimes found restruck with the types of Heliocles (Pl. VII, 35). The restruck coins of Strato bear the reverse-type ‘Victory,’ which was inherited by him either from Menander or from Agathocleia ruling in the name of Menander (Pl. VI, 15 and *Summary*, p. 588); and this type may not improbably be supposed to represent the city of Nicaea on the Jhelum (p. 551). We have here unmistakable evidence of a further transference of the dominions of the house of Euthydemus to the rival house of Eucratides, and a certain indication that the conflict which was begun by Eucratides in the time of Demetrius and Apollodotus, was continued by Heliocles in the reign of Strato.
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The lifetime of Strato witnessed not only the decline in the eastern Punjab of the royal house to which he belonged, but also the downfall of Yavana rule in Northern India; for in his reign there came still another great foreign invasion which led to the supremacy of the Çakas and Pahlavas. The debased art of his latest coins and of those in which he is associated with his grandson seems to show that the house of Euthydemus had fallen on evil days; and other coins clearly suggest the manner in which it came to an end. The familiar type of the house of Euthydemus, ‘Athene Promachos,’ continues to appear on coins; but the strikers no longer bear Greek names. Their names are either Indian like Bhadrayaçasa, or Çaka like Rañjubula (*Summary*, p. 589 and Pl. VII, 24). The former is otherwise unknown: the latter was the satrap of Mathurā c. 50 B.C.¹ It appears most probable that the kingdoms held in the eastern Punjab by the last successors of Euthydemus were conquered not by the first Çaka king, Maues, but by his successor, Azes I (58 B.C.), who was either contemporary with, or later in date than, Apollodotus II and Hippostratus whose coins he restruck².
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¹ See Chapter XXIII, pp. 575 f.
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² Lahore Mus. Cat. pp. 122–3; and Chapter XXIII, p. 572.
Linked texts (5)
- Bṛhadāraṇyakopaniṣad — Sanskrit
- Mahāvaṃsa — Pāli
- Milindapañha — Pāli
- Πλούταρχος — Πλούταρχος, Ancient Greek
- Nicaea