The Greeks in Bactria and India c10.s1.337

c10.s1.337

The explanation of the thousand cities must be sought on other lines, of which the beginning can be detected in those measures of the Seleucid kings which tended gradually to raise the status of the serfs and the serf villages (p. 33). Chang-k'ien is not speaking of Greek cities or military colonies; what he means is that in Bactria every native village of any size had been walled. After all, he is explicit enough: his description of the Ta-hia is that of an Iranian or Iranianised population, as is clearly shown by the reference to their beards and their language.² He describes exactly the same thing in the small kingdom of Ferghana (Ta-yuan), once a Bactrian province, and there he gives the number of walled towns as 'fully 70';³ but if half-a-dozen military colonies had been planted there to watch the Jaxartes frontier, that is all there would be in that distant land. Alexander had started the system of walling-in villages by establishing fortified posts throughout Sogdiana in his struggle with Spitamenes,⁴ which meant fortifying villages at strategic points, and doubtless the Seleucids, who built the great wall of Merv, built little walls also; the invaluable Parthian survey which Isidore has preserved shows the gradual emergence in Media and eastern Iran of the large walled village, for the scanty villages noted in the survey are of course walled villages only; were it otherwise, some provinces of Iran would according to Isidore have possessed no country population at all.¹ But the Greek kings of Bactria, partly no doubt under the ever-present threat of the nomads, had carried out this policy on a scale which at the time had no parallel elsewhere. If Chang-k’ien knew of 70 such walled villages in the little province of Ferghana, a round figure of 1000 for Bactria and Sogdiana, though perhaps exaggerated, might be no such great exaggeration, especially as the native population had increased considerably during the two generations of the Seleucid peace; even after Eucratides’ wars and the nomad conquest Chang-k’ien gives the number in Bactria itself (without Sogdiana) as over a million.² These large walled villages were meant to protect the peasantry from nomad raids till the troops of the king or satrap could intervene, and they would accustom the serf population to the use of arms in self-defence. But they also acted in another way, which was more important: they enabled the germs of communal life to take root and grow.