The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c30.s2.10

v1.c30.s2.10

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.