The Greeks in Bactria and India c10.s2.124

c10.s2.124

With Barygaza Apollodotus had reached what must have been one of the Greek objectives, the great port which could give them good trade communication by sea with the West; but he had also reached something else, for Barygaza was the terminus of the main road which ran from west to east across India by Ujjain and Vidiśā (Bhilsa) to Kosambī on the Jumna, and so to the Ganges and Pāṭaliputra.³ It is known that he turned inland, for Patañjali gives one more notice, ‘The Yavana was besieging Madhyamikā’,⁴ a place identified by its coins with the strong fortress of Nagarī near Chitor in southern Rajputana.⁵ It seems certain that he not only besieged but took it, for its coins show that in the middle of the second century B.C. it was peopled by Sibi,¹ whose own country was about Jhang in the southern Punjab with their capital at Shorkot, ‘Sibi-town’,² and who must, it seems, have been settled at Madhyamikā by Apollodotus; there is no question of the whole people having moved, for the known coins come from a very circumscribed area, Nagarī and Chitor.³