Intercourse between India and the Western World from the Earliest Times to the Fall of Rome c9.7

c9.7

Meanwhile, the great Empire of the Mauryas was slowly breaking up. A succession of weak monarchs followed the death of Aśoka in 231 B.C., and it is not surprising that the Baktrians began to turn their attention to the rich plains which lay beyond the Paropamisus. There were probably already settled there considerable colonies of Yavanas, descendants of the Greek soldiers who preferred staying in India to participating in the evacuation of Eudamus in 317 B.C. At any rate, between 190 and 180 B.C., Demetrius, the son and successor of Euthydemus, conquered Ariana, crossed the Paropamisus, and subdued not only Pattalene or Sind, but also Surāṣṭra,—the Kathi-āwār and Surāt districts—and an obscure province which Strabo calls Sigertis¹. At the same time, he extended the Baktrian Empire “to the Seres and Phrynoi.” His object in both these undertakings was no doubt commercial. He pushed the limits of his realm to the edge of the Pamirs in order to control the silk-routes; and by conquering Sind and Kathiāwār, he obtained an outlet to the sea by the great waterway of the Indus. Demetrius, apparently, made his Indian territories into a separate province. Its capital was Euthydemeia, the new name which he bestowed, in memory of his father, upon the ancient city of Sāgala². Other towns which he built were Demetria in Sind and another town of the same name in Arachosia. He probably absorbed the remains of the older Greek principalities¹, whose capital, Alexandria-on-Indus, "Alasanda of the Yonas," was famous enough to find mention in the chronicles of the remote island of Ceylon. The fine coins struck by Demetrius illustrate very appropriately the events of his reign. In some, he wears upon his head a wonderful elephant-headed helmet, appropriate to the conqueror of India². Another type³, issued no doubt for circulation in his Indian domains, is the square type, bearing an inscription in Kharoshṭhī, the script then almost exclusively used in the North-West Frontier. A third type represents the king in extreme old age. On the reverse stands Anahid, the goddess of Baktra, with her starry crown⁴. It was in his old age that the great conqueror was defeated by a rival named Eukratides, perhaps his grandson¹, who raised a rebellion against him during his absence². Though Demetrius had an army of sixty thousand men, and his opponent’s forces dwindled down to three hundred followers, Eukratides managed, after a blockade of five months, to cut his way out to safety and finally to depose Demetrius³. But the way of transgressors is hard, for Eukratides was finally slain, on his return from India, by his own son, who declared him to be “ a public enemy and not a parent,” and driving his chariot through his father’s blood, ordered the body to be left unburied where it had fallen⁴.