Age of the Nandas and Mauryas c12.s15.21.3

c12.s15.21.3

It is this trade route that explains the Aramaic inscription referred to above and datable in the fourth century B. C. It was along this route also that foreigners including envoys, Greek traders, travellers, artists and craftsmen must have flocked to Mauryan India in such numbers as to oblige the State to maintain a department to look after their comfort and well-being. This intimate contact indeed explains such finds as the fragmentary handle of a terracotta vase showing Alexander's head in lion's skin and recovered from Taxila¹, or random finds from Sārnāth, Basarh and the Patna region of terracotta pieces of distinctive Hellenistic appearance or with definite Hellenistic motifs and design². That they belong probably to a later date does not minimise the importance of the very intimate relations the Maurya court maintained with the Hellenic east; rather they point out that even after the decline and downfall of the Mauryas parts of India continued to remain in touch with the Hellenistic world. Within a century after the death of Aśoka a Greek army penetrated as far east as Mādhyamika near Chitor and Sāketa near Ayodhyā.