The Greeks in Bactria and India c10.s1.352

c10.s1.352

We must imagine something like a double state: a state in which the Bactrian landowners, while continuing to manage their estates, also came to the Court and had their share of the administrative posts, and prospered considerably, for that 10,000 horse means a considerable increase in the number of their retainers. We have to work with rather slight indications, but about the general position there can be little doubt, for the policy of the dynasty in Bactria cannot have differed radically from that which it was to follow in India. Alexander had finally decided that the only way to rule Iran was frankly to take her into partnership, and Euthydemus in some form took Bactria into partnership; it is our loss that we do not know by what means he and his son managed to secure the co-operation of the landowners while they were at the same time transforming the condition of the serfs. It is unfortunate too that the Indian material does not enable us to trace the Bactrians who must have borne their part in the Greek invasion of India; Indian writers would usually class them with Greeks under the name Yavana, while as the word Bāhlika (Bactrian) was already in use in India for some of the semi-foreign peoples of the Indian North-West (p. 169), its occasional occurrence in inscriptions gives no clue as to what kind of Bactrian is meant.²