The Greeks in Bactria and India c10.s2.147

c10.s2.147

For a few brief years Demetrius was lord of a realm which in mere size probably surpassed that of the first Seleucus; he ruled from the Jaxartes to the Gulf of Cambaye, from the Persian desert to the middle Ganges. Put into modern terms, and speaking roughly, his kingdom included Afghanistan and something more, the northern and probably also the southern part of Baluchistan, most of Russian Turkestan with some extension into Chinese Turkestan, and in India part of the North-West Frontier, the Punjab with southern Kashmir, much of the United Provinces with a small slice of Bihar, Sind, Cutch, Kathiawar, and the northern part of Gujerat, with apparently some extension into Rajputana. What can be made out about the Indian provinces in detail will be considered later, when everything that remained after the abandonment of Pātaliputra and Ujjain had passed into the hands of Menander; but it may be noticed here that the later legend which carried Alexander’s victorious arms to the Ganges and Magadha (Pātaliputra),¹ and the saying attributed to Chandragupta that Alexander had all but secured for himself his (Chandragupta’s) empire of Northern India,² alike spring from the victorious progress of Demetrius.