Age of the Nandas and Mauryas c10.21

c10.21

Most of the Greek coins discussed above are extra-Indian in character, from the point of view of their provenance; but almost all of them have some association, near or remote, with the country. The hoards of Greek coins, however, that were actually minted here and which passed as currency in the extreme north and north-west were the ones issued by the Greek rulers of Bactria and India. These Bactrian Greeks at first owed allegiance to Seleucus I and his successors, and it was under Antiochus Theos (Antiochus II), the grandson of Seleucus I, that one Diodotus, the Greek satrap of Bactria, threw off the Syrian yoke sometime in the middle of the third century B.C. Justin says that this Diodotus died shortly after the assumption of independence and was succeeded by his son of the same name. The second Diodotus issued coins bearing his name and the device of Antiochus II. But these coins as well as those of Euthydemus I who dispossessed him of the throne of Bactria, were all issued outside India. The coins of the immediate successors of Euthydemus I, viz., Demetrius and others were mostly non-Indian issues; a few of them were, however, actually minted in this country, when Demetrius carried the Bactrian Greek arms into India and conquered some parts of it. Eucratides who was a supplanter of Demetrius in Bactria and the head of a rival branch of the Greek princelings contending with Demetrius' successors for possessions in the extreme north and north-west of India, issued a large number of coins many of which were of Indian origin. The coins of the host of the Indo-Greek rulers, mostly belonging either to the house of Euthydemus I or to that of Eucratides, were all minted here, because these Greek princes who had long been driven out of Bactria by the Sakas had made their home in India. The story, however, of these Bactrian and Indo-Greek princes and their coins, though begining in the latter part of the Maurya age, really falls within the Śuṅga and Kāṇva periods.