The Greeks in Bactria and India c10.s1.200

c10.s1.200

When Alexander died, the satrap of the Paropamisadae was his father-in-law, the Bactrian Oxyartes; he must have become virtually independent during the wars of the Successors, though he or his successor finally accepted the overlordship of Seleucus. One of the best numismatic authorities on these eastern borderlands has held that the name Vakhsuvar on a famous coin dated in the year 83 of some era is a transcript of Oxyartes and that the era cannot be the Seleucid;¹ his deduction that Oxyartes founded a dynasty whose members all bore the same name and that this is a coin of the dynasty struck in a year between the limits 253 and 244 is very attractive, for such a dynasty has a certain probability in itself and would agree with Asoka’s inscriptions. Another of Alexander’s Iranian satraps, Atropates, founded a similar dynasty in Azerbaijan, ‘Media of Atropates’, which lasted long and at one time played some part in history;² and there is another case beside that of Oxyartes where only a single coin remains to testify to a lost kingdom (p. 484). The Oxyartes dynasty (if it existed) must have remained Seleucid vassals down to the time of this coin, the time which saw the hand of the Seleucid slacken in the East and Asoka the Maurya at the height of his power. Asoka has recorded that he sent missionaries to Greeks on his frontier, which, from their being coupled with the Kambojas of Kafiristan (Kapisene), means the Paropamisadae; but whereas at first he calls these Greeks a frontier people,³ he afterwards treats them as included within his dominions.⁴ It looks as though, soon after the date of the coin, the Oxyartes dynasty ended and Asoka established some form of rule or suzerainty over the Paropamisadae, for when Antiochus III crossed the Hindu Kush, far from re-establishing Seleucid suzerainty over the province, he renewed friendship with Asoka’s descendant the Maurya Sophagasenos (p. 130) and merely used the occasion to raise the number of his elephants to 150, an overwhelming force which, properly handled, should have saved the battle of Magnesia by preventing Eumenes from charging. It cannot be said whether either Euthydemus or Demetrius acquired this important province prior to 184 (Chap. IV), for that Menander, a Greek of the Paropamisadae, had already been in Demetrius’ service for some time before that date (p. 141) proves nothing; it is possible, but the history of the Paropamisadae is a blank between 206 (Antiochus III) and Demetrius’ invasion of India.