The Greeks in Bactria and India c10.s1.82

c10.s1.82

To the northward, Euthydemus, besides Sogdiana, ruled Ferghana, a province which in the Greek period was as highly cultivated as Bactria itself (App. 10); whether its population were Sacas, Sogdians, or something older,¹ they had definitely ceased to be nomads, if they had ever been so. The boundaries of Seleucid Sogdiana are not known, and Ptolemy’s Sogdiana, which includes Chorasmia (never under Greek rule) and does not include Ferghana,² is a patchwork of different periods which gives no help; but whether or no Ferghana had ever been part of the Persian empire, it was certainly not part of it in Alexander’s day (App. 10). But it was undoubtedly in Greek hands before Euthydemus died, whether its acquisition was due to him or to the Seleucids; we hear of a mysterious Antioch in Scythia,³ which might have been the capital of the province, whatever it was, and if so the conquest may have been made by Demodamas during the joint reigns of Seleucus and Antiochus I, the period which saw the exploration of the Caspian and the walling-round of the Merv oasis, for Demodamas is known to have been active on the Jaxartes.¹ The Persian road which Alexander had followed from Samarcand only went to Cyropolis and the loop of the Jaxartes; but in 128 B.C. Chang-k’ien, coming from the east, travelled through Ferghana on ‘postal roads’ and found it full of ‘walled towns’,² and Greek rule over the province is not in doubt (App. 10), though it cannot be said if they ruled the whole of Chang-k’ien’s Ta-yuan, which seems to have been larger than the later Ferghana; in his day its then Saca lords held the river valleys up to the watershed on the Pamirs (ib.). The route through Chinese Turkestan to the West most favoured at a somewhat later time passed through Kashgar and thence ran, skirting rather than crossing the Pamirs, to Irkishtam, where it bifurcated, one branch crossing the Terek pass and reaching Ferghana, the other, the later Silk Route, holding on down the Alai valley and so ultimately to Bactria;³ with Bactria and Ferghana in his hands Euthydemus held the ends of both forks of the easiest route into Chinese Turkestan.