The Greeks in Bactria and India c10.s1.2

c10.s1.2

HAD the story of the Bactrian Greeks survived, it would be considered one of the most remarkable of a remarkable time; but though it was treated by two Greek historians of the Farther East (Chap. II), nothing has come down to us directly but some fragments and scattered notices and the coins. And there is not even the help which can be got in India from Indian literature and inscriptions and from archaeological research; nothing seems known of any native Bactrian literature at this period, and though the brief Chinese account of the country is invaluable China did not get into touch with Bactria till Greek rule had just ended. Moreover, the situation of the country, which to-day forms the northern part of Afghanistan, has always precluded archaeological research. There is said to be a certain amount of archaeological material in the museum at Tashkent, but if so it has never been made available to European scholars generally. A French archaeological mission was able to visit the upper Kabul valley in 1923, and permission was obtained for a brief visit to Balkh; a trench was sunk in a mound believed to represent the citadel of Bactra, but it got no further down than the fifteenth-century city, the Balkh of the Timourids.¹ The ruin mounds on the plain of Balkh are said to extend for 16 miles,² and the excavation of Bactra alone would occupy many years; that of Susa has been going on for over a generation, and it was