The Greeks in Bactria and India c10.s1.322

c10.s1.322

New settlers must have continued to arrive in Bactria throughout the third century: Euthydemus was not the only Greek who came from the West. The process is lost, but the consequences of the two centuries of Greek rule are well attested: Alexander in 326 found a land of open villages, Chang-k'ien in 128 found a land of walled towns;² to the Greeks of the Farther East the ‘thousand cities of Bactria’ became a proverb, though perhaps not till after the destruction of Greek rule.³ What proportion of all this settlement was Greek or European (for people like Thracians would soon have become indistinguishable from Greeks, as they did in Ptolemaic Egypt) cannot be said, but the story of Eucratides (Chap. v) shows that it was substantial: in spite of their power and their Indian armies, the position of the Euthydemids was not proof against the defection of the Graeco-Macedonian military colonists. There are however very few indisputably Greek cities known. The record is miserably defective, but for what it is worth the only names recorded by Greek writers in the Euthydemid home kingdom are, in Bactria, Alexandria-Bactra and (later) Eucratideia;⁴ in Sogdiana, Alexandria-Eschate⁵ on the Jaxartes (Chodjend) and the rather dubious Alexandria of the Oxus;⁶ possibly an Antioch in Ferghana (p. 83), if it be not Alexandria-Eschate refounded; and Antioch-Merv. It is however tolerably certain that Demetrius founded a name-city Demetrias in Sogdiana, for a Sanscrit work, existing only in a Thibetan translation, recorded a city Dharmamitra,⁷ and Dharmamita is the (Prakrit) form given to Demetrius’ name in the Yuga-purāna (App. 4 and p. 178). The Thibetan translator has added that this name was the original of Tarmita, which is Termedh,⁸ represented by the modern Termez, on the north bank of the Oxus; the river of Bactra, the Bactrus, then entered the Oxus,¹ and there is some later evidence that when it did so it was at a point opposite Termedh.² Termedh, where the railway from Samarcand now comes to the river, was also the location of the crossing on the main route from Samarcand and the north to Bactra—Hsüan Tsiang crossed at this point;³ there is an island here in the river, and possibly the Greeks had a bridge of boats, as there was at a later time; and Greek coins are often found in the ruins of the oldest city.⁴ Demetrias therefore was well placed to gather up both the trade from the north and that which came down the Bactrus, as well as the local river traffic, which was doubtless important on the Oxus just as it was on the Nile. The complete shipwreck of our Greek evidence is illustrated by the fact that, of the three cities named Demetrias, two—those in Sogdiana and in Sind—are only known now from Indian sources; and no one can say that another may not come to light.