Political History of Ancient India, from the Accession of Parikshit to the Extinction of the Gupta Dynasty c17.s3: Section III. The End of Greek Rule in North-West India
Political History of Ancient India, from the Accession of Parikshit to the Extinction of the Gupta Dynasty c17.s3
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Section III. The End of Greek Rule in North-West India
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While the remnant of the Magadhan monarchy was falling before the onslaughts of the Sātavāhanas and the Chetas, the Greek power in the North-West was also hastening towards dissolution. We have already referred to the feuds of Demetrios and Eukratides. The dissensions of these two princes led to a double succession, one derived from Demetrios holding for a time Kāpiśa and then Sākala (Siālkoṭ) with a considerable portion of the Indian interior, the other derived from Eukratides holding Nicaea,¹ Takshaśilā and Pushkarāvatī as well as Kāpiśa (which was conquered from Apollodotos) and Bactria. According to Gardner and Rapson, Apollodotos, Antimachos, Pantaleon, Agathokles, Agathokleia,² the Stratos, Menander, Dionysios, Zoilos,³ Hippostratos and Apollophanes⁴ probably belonged to the house of Euthydemos and Demetrios. Most of these sovereigns used similar coin-types,¹ specially the figure of the goddess Athene hurling the thunderbolt, which is characteristic of the Euthydemian line. Pantaleon and Agathokles strike coins with almost identical types.² They both adopt the metal nickel for their coins, and they alone use in their legends the Brāhmī alphabet. They seem, therefore, to have been closely connected probably as brothers. It is not improbable that Agathokleia was their sister.³ Agathokles (and possibly Antimachos) issued a series of coins⁴ in commemoration of Alexander, Antiochos Nikator (Antiochos III Megas according to Malala), Diodotos Soter, Euthydemos and Demetrios Aniketos (the Invincible).
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¹ It lay on the Jhelum between that river and the Chenāb and was probably conquered by Heliokles in the reign of Strato I (*CHI*, 553, 699).
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² According to some numismatics (*CHI*, 552) she was probably Menander's queen. But the theory has to explain why the 'evidence' regarding the supposed relationship is so *vague* (contra Heliokles and Laodike, Hermaios and Kalliope). *Cf.* Whitehead in *Numismatic Chronicle*, Vol. XX (1940), p. 97, 1950, 216.
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³ "Apollodotos Philopator, Dionysios and Zoilos show a common and peculiar monogram struck probably by the same moneyer in one mint." Hoards of coins of these three princes have been found on the upper Sutlej. Coins of Zoilos have also been found at Pathankot and near Sākala (JRAS, 1913, 645n1; JASB 1897, 8; Tarn, *The Greeks in Bactria and India*, 316 f).
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⁴ Apollophanes shares a monogram with Zoilos and Strato (Tarn, *Greeks*, 317). Polyxenos, too, belongs to this group (p. 318). Whitehead considers him a close relation of Strato I (*Indo-Greek Coins*, 54n). The later kings of this group are connected with the Eastern Pañjāb (EHI, 4th ed., pp. 257-58). Tarn infers from a statement of Plutarch that after the death of Menander the eastern capital was shifted from Sākala to Bukephala (on the east bank of the Jhelum, Tarn, *Alexander the Great, Sources and Studies*, 236).
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¹ For an interesting account of Indo-Greek coin-types see H. K. Deb, IHQ, 1934, 509 ff.
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² Dancing girl in oriental costume according to Whitehead; Māyā, mother of the Buddha, in the nativity scene according to Foucher (JRAS, 1919, p. 90).
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³ Agathokleia is also closely connected with the Stratos, being probably mother or queen of Strato I, and great (?) grandmother of Strato II of the JRNS, 1950, 216.
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⁴ According to Tarn (447 f) the fictitious Seleukid pedigree is the key to the (pedigree) coin series of Agathokles, the Just.
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Apollodotos, the Stratos, Menander and some later kings used the Athene type of coins. Apollodotos and Menander are mentioned together in literature. The author of the *Periplus of the Erythraean Sea* says that "to the present day ancient drachmae are current in Barygaza (Broach) bearing inscriptions in Greek letters, and the devices of those who reigned after Alexander, Apollodotos and Menander." Again, in the title of the lost forty-first book of Justin's work, Menander and Apollodotos are mentioned as Indian kings.⁵ It appears from the *Milinda-pañho* that the capital of the dynasty to which Menander belonged was Sākala or Sāgala.⁶
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⁵ Rhys Davids, *Milinda*, SBE, 35, p. xix. *Cf*. JASB, Aug., 1833.
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⁶ "Atthi Yonakānaṁ nānāpuṭabhedanaṁ Sāgalannāma nagaram," Jambudīpe Sāgala nagare Milindo nāma Rājā ahosi," "Atthi kho *Nāgasena Sāgalaṁ nāma nagaraṁ, tattha Milindo nāma Rājā rajjaṁ kāreti.*” The form *Yonaka* from which chronological conclusions have been drawn in *recent times*, is comparable to **Madraka**, **Vṛijika** (Pāṇini, IV. 2. 131).
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We learn from Ptolemy, the Geographer that the city had another name Euthymedia or Euthydemia, a designation which was probably derived from the Euthydemian line. An inscription on a steatite casket which comes from Shinkot in Bajaur territory refers to the 5th regnal year of *Māhārāja Minadra* (Menander). The record proves that in the 5th year of his reign the dominions of Menander probably included a considerable portion of the Trans-Indus territory. The Kāpiśa and Nicaea coins indicate how some of the rulers of the Euthydemian group were gradually pushed to the Indian interior. They had to remove their capital to Sākala.
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To the rival family of Eukratides belonged Heliokles and probably Antialkidas who ruled conjointly with Lysias. A common type of Antialkidas is the Pilei of the Dioscuri, which seems to connect him with Eukratides; his portrait according to Gardner resembles that of Heliokles. It is not improbable that he was an immediate successor of Heliokles.¹ A Besnagar Inscription makes him a contemporary of Kāsî (Kośî = Kautsī?) putra Bhāgabhadra of Vidiśā who ruled some time after Agnimitra probably in or about the latter half of the second century B.C. The capital of Antialkidas was probably at Takshaśilā or Taxila, the place from which his ambassador Heliodoros went to the kingdom of Bhāgabhadra. But his dominions seem also to have included Kāpiśi or Kāpiśa.² After his death the western Greek kingdom probably split up into three parts, *viz.*, Takshaśilā (ruled by the line represented by Archebios¹), Pushkalāvatī (governed by Diomedes, Epander,² Philoxenos, Artemidoros, and Peukolaos), and Kāpiśi with the Kābul region held successively by Amyntas and Hermaeus (Hermaios). With Hermaios was associated his queen, Kalliope. Kāpiśa was, according to Chinese evidence, probably occupied by the Sai-wang (Śāka lord) some time in the latter part of the second century B.C. But the barbarian chieftain, like the Kushān *Yavuga* of later times, may have acknowledged the nominal suzerainty of the Greek *Basileas*, as Teutonic chieftains in Europe were, during the fifth century A.D., sometimes content with the rank of 'patrician' and 'consul,' under the nominal authority of the titular Roman emperor.
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¹ Gardner, *Catalogue of Indian Coins in the British Museum*, p. xxxiv.
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² *Camb. Hist.*, 558.
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¹ A copper piece of this king is restruck, probably on a coin of Heliokles (Whitehead, p. 39).
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² The 'Pallas and thunderbolt' type of his silver coins, probably connects him with the Śākala group, *ibid.*, 64. Among the rulers of the Gandhāra region we should perhaps also include Telephos whose coinage resembles that of Maues, *ibid.*, 80. A prince named Nikias apparently ruled in the Jhelum District (EHI, 4th end., 258), and perhaps other tracts (*Num. Chron.*, 1940, p. 109). But the story of his naval victory over Maues is based on inadequate evidence.
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The Greek power must have been greatly weakened by the feuds of the rival lines of Demetrios and Eukratides. The evils of internal dissension were aggravated by foreign inroads. We learn from Strabo³ that the **Parthians** deprived Eukratides (and the Scythians) by force of arms of a part of Bactriana, which embraced the satrapies of Aspionus and Turiva (possibly Aria and Arachosia according to Macdonald). There is reason to believe that the Parthian king Mithradates I penetrated even into India. Orosius, a Roman historian, who flourished about 400 A.D., makes a definite statement to the effect that Mithradates (*c.* B.C. 171-138)
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³ H. and F.'s Vol. II, pp. 251-253.
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subdued the natives between the Hydaspes¹ and the Indus. His conquest thus appears to have driven a wedge between the kingdom of Eukratides and that of his rival of the house of Euthydemos.
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¹ In the *Cambridge History of India*, Vol. I, p. 568, however, this river has been identified with a Persian stream, the *Medus Hydaspes* of Virgil.
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The causes of the final downfall of the Bactrian Greeks are thus stated by Justin: "the Bactrians harassed by various wars lost not only their dominions but their liberty; for having suffered from contentions with the Sogdians, the Drangians and the Indians (?) they were at last overcome as if exhausted by the weaker Parthians."²
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² Sten Konow translates the passage from Justin thus: The Bactrians lost both their empire and their freedom, being harassed by the Sogdians (beyond the Oxus), the Arachoti (of the Argandāb valley of S. Afghanistan), the Drangae (lake-dwellers, near the Hamun Lake) and the Arei (of Herat), and finally oppressed by the Parthians (Corpus, ii. 1, xxi-xxii).
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The **Sogdians** were the people of the region now known as Samarkand and Bukhārā. They were separated from Bactriana by the Oxus and from the Śakas by the Jaxartes or the Syr Daria.³ By the term Sogdian Justin probably refers not only to the Sogdiani proper but also to the well-known tribes which, according to Strabo,⁴ deprived the Greeks of Bactriana, *viz.*, the Asii, Pasiani, Tochari, Sacarauli and the Sacae or Śakas. The story of the Śaka occupation of the Indo-Greek possessions will be told in the next chapter. The Latin historian Pompeius Trogus describes how Diodotos had to fight Scythian tribes, the Saraucae (Saraucae) and Asiani, who finally conquered Sogdiana and Bactria. The occupation of Sogdiana probably entitled them to the designation Sogdian used by Justin. Sten Konow⁵ suggests the identification of the Tochari of the Classical writers with the Ta-hia of the Chinese historians. He further identifies the Asii, Asioi or Asiani with the Yüe-chi. We are inclined to identify the Tochari with the Tukhāras who formed an important element of the Bactrian population in the time of Ptolemy and are described by that author as a great people.¹ They are apparently "the war-like nation of the Bactrians" of the time of the Periplus.
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³ Strabo, XI. 8. 8-9.
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⁴ *H. and F.'s Tr.*, Vol. II, pp. 245-46. *Cf.* JRAS., 1906, 193 f.; Whitehead, *Indo-Greek Coins*, 171, Bachhofer, *JAOS*, 61 (1941), 245 (criticism of Tarn).
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⁵ *Modern Review*, April, 1921, p. 464. *Corpus*, II. 1, xxii, lvii f,
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¹ *Ind. Ant.*, 1884, pp. 395-96.
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The **Drangians**, literally 'lake-dwellers ',² referred to by Justin, inhabited the country about the Hamun lake (*Zareh*) between Areia (Herat), Gedrosia (Baluchistān) and Arachosia (Kandahār) and the desert of Eastern Persia, close to and perhaps including at times within its political boundaries the neighbouring province now called Sīstān or Seistan (Śakasthāna).³ Numismatic evidence indicates that a family whose territory lay mainly in southern Afganisthān, viz., the so-called **dynasty of Vonones**, supplanted Greek rule in a considerable part of the Helmund valley, Ghazni and Kandahār (**Arachosia**). Vonones is a Parthian (Imperial) name. Hence many scholars call his dynasty a Parthian family, and some go so far as to assert that this Vonones is the Arsakid king of that name who reigned from A.D. 8 to 14.⁴ But names are not sure proofs of nationality. Sir R. G. Bhandarkar calls the dynasty Śaka.⁵ The best name for the family would be Drangian, because the chief centre of their power probably lay in the Helmund valley, Arachosia being ruled by a viceroy.¹ On coins Vonones is associated with two princes, *viz.*,
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² Schoff, *Parthian Stations*, 32.
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³ *Corpus*, xl; Whitehead, *Indo-Greek Coins*, 92; MASI, 34. 7. Isidore, places Drangiana (Zarangiana) beyond Phra (Farah), and locates Śakasthāna beyond this territory, (Schoff, 9). But Herzfeld points out that Sīstān is the Achaemenian 'Zrang'.
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⁴ *Camb. Short Hist.*, 69.
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⁵ Isidore of Charax who mentions the revolt of Tiridates against Phraates (26 B.C.) and is quoted by Pliny (Schoff, *Parthian Stations*, pp. 5, 13 ff, 17; *JRAS*, 1904, 706; 1906, 180; 1912, 990, refers (*Parthian Stations*, 9, para 18, *ZDMG.*, 1906, pp. 57-58; *JRAS.*, 1915, p. 831; Tarn, *The Greeks in Bactria and India*, 53) to Sigal in Sacastene (near Kandahar?) as the royal residence of the Sakas (not Parthians) about the beginning of the Christian era. The names of the brother or brothers and nephew of Vonones, (or Maues) ruling in southern Afghanistan seem to be Scythian (*cf.* Rapson quoted in *Corpus* II. 1, xlii). Thus the local rulers of southern Afghanistan about B.C. 26 or a little later were probably Sakas. It is, however, possible that they acknowledged the supremacy of the great king of Parthia.
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¹ *Corpus*, xlii.
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(i) Spalahora (Spalyris) who is called *Mahārāja-bhrātā* (the king's brother).
(ii) Spalaga-dama, son of Spalahora.
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There is one coin which Edward Thomas and Cunningham attributed to Vonones and Azes I. But the coin really belongs to Maues.² There is a silver coin of a prince named Spalirises which bears on the obverse the legend *Basileus Adelphoy Spilirisoy*, and on the reverse "*Mahārāja bhrātā dhramiasa Spaliriśasa*," *i.e.*, of Spalirises the Just, brother of the king. This king has been identified by some with Vonones and by others with Maues.³ Vonones was succeeded as supreme ruler by Spalirises.⁴ The coins of Spalirises present two varieties, *viz.*,
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² Whitehead, *Catalogue of Coins in the Pañjāb Museum (Indo-Greek Coins)*, p. 93. *Num. Chron.*, JRNS (1950), p. 208n. Smith, *Catalogue*, 38. Bachhofer (*JAOS*, 61, 239) and Tarn possibly repeat the mistake (*Greeks*, 344n 2).
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³ Herzfeld identifies the royal brother of Spalirises with Maues (*Camb. Short Hist.* 69).
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⁴ It should be noted that certain coin-types of Spalirises are found restruck on coins of Vonones (*CHI*, 574) and on a copper coin of Spalyris and Spalagadama (*Corpus*, II. 1. xli). This proves that Spalirises was later than Vonones, Spalyris and Spalagadama. The square Omicron on a coin of Spalyris probably points to a date not earlier than Orodes II (55 to 38/7 B.C.). Tarn, *Greeks*, 326.
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1. Coins which bear his name alone in both the legends :
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2. Coins on which his name occurs on the obverse in the Greek legend, and those of Azes on the reverse in the *Kharoshṭhī* legend.
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The second variety proves that Spalirises had a colleague named Azes who governed a territory where the prevailing script was *Kharoshṭhī*. This Azes has been identified with king Azes of the Pañjāb about whom we shall speak in the next chapter.
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As regards the Indian enemies of the Bactrian Greeks we must refer in the first place to the prince of the house of Pushyamitra who is represented in Kālidāsa's *Mālavikāgnimitram* as defeating the Yavanas on the Sindhu. An Indian named Bhadrayaśas seems to have had some share in the destruction of the Greek kingdom of the Eastern Pañjāb. The Nāsik *praśasti* of Gautamīputra Sātakarṇi represents that king as the destroyer of the Yavanas, apparently of Western India.
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The final destruction of Greek rule was, as Justin says, the work of the Parthians. Marshall tells us¹ that the last surviving Greek principality,² that of Hermaios in the Kābul valley, was overthrown by the Parthian king Gondophernes.³ The Chinese historian Fan-ye also refers to the Parthian occupation of Kābul.⁴ "Whenever any of the three kingdoms of Tien-tchou (India Proper), Ki-pin (Kāpiśa) or Ngansi (Parthia), became powerful, it brought Kābul into subjection. When it grew weak it lost Kābul. . . . Later, Kābul fell under the rule of Parthia."¹ The real conquest of Kābul by the Parthians could hardly have taken place till after the time of Isidore (last quarter of the first century B.C.)² because the writings of that geographer do not include the Kābul valley in the list of the eastern provinces of the Parthian Empire. By A.D. 43-44, however, Parthian rule had extended to this region as we learn from Philostratos.
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¹ *A Guide to Taxila*, p. 14.
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² Among the latest Greek rulers of the Kābul Valley we have to include Theodamas whose existence is disclosed by a Bajaur Seal Inscription (*Corpus*, II, i. xv, 6).
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³ In ASI, AR, 1929-30, pp. 56 ff., however, Marshall modifies his earlier views in regard to the conquest of the Greek kingdom of Kābul by the Parthians. He suggests that the Kābul Valley became a bone of contention between Parthians and Kushāns and changed hands more than once before the final eclipse of the Parthian power.
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⁴ JRAS., 1912, 676; *Journal of the Department of Letters*, Calcutta University, Vol. I, p. 81.
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¹ *Cf.* Thomas JRAS., 1906, 194. For the results of India's contact with the Hellenic world in the domains of religion, administration, literature, science and art see Bhandarkar, "*Foreign Elements in the Hindu Population*" (*Ind. Ant.*, 1911); Raychaudhuri, "*Early History of the Vaishṇava Sect*, 1st ed.," p. 106; Foucher, "*The Beginnings of Buddhist Art*," pp. 9, 111 f.; Coomaraswami, "*History of Indian and Indonesian Art*," pp. 41 f.; Sten Konow, "*Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum*," Vol. II, Pt. 1. xv; Hopkins, "*Religion of India*," pp. 544 f.; Keith, "*The Sanskrit Drama*," pp. 57 f.; Keith, "*A History of Sanskrit Literature*," pp. 352 f.; Max Müller, "*India—What can it teach Us*," pp. 321 f.; Smith, EHI⁴, pp. 251-56; "*A History of Fine Art in India and Ceylon*," Chap. XI; *Imp. Gaz.*, The Indian Empire, Vol. II, pp. 105 f., 137 f., etc.
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² Tarn, *The Greeks in Bactria and India*, 53; Schoff. *The Parthian Stations of Isidore of Charax*, 17.
Linked texts (3)
- Aṣṭādhyāyī — Pāṇini, Sanskrit
- Milindapañha — Pāli
- Mālavikāgnimitra — Kālidāsa, Sanskrit