The Greeks in Bactria and India c10.s2.184

c10.s2.184

It is unfortunate that the coinage of Taxila⁴ does not help us to understand the position of the great city under Greek rule. That coinage, though abundant, is thought only to have begun late in the third century B.C. and to have ended ‘with the Greek conquest before the middle of the second century’;⁵ that is, it belongs to the period when the Maurya power was failing and Taxila could assert itself. But it seems unlikely that Demetrius, who, apart from any views of his own, was bound by the circumstances of his conquest to be conciliatory where he could, should have begun by abolishing his own city’s coinage, especially as his hands were too full at the time to put anything in its place; and the relationship between the coinages of Taxila and Agathocles may suggest that Taxila was still coining when Agathocles was governing the Paropamisadae,⁶ that is, during the latter part of the reign of Demetrius (died 167). Indeed the end of the city's coinage might be connected with the invasion of Eucratides (165 or 164) or with the capture of the city by his son Heliocles; but the whole matter is too uncertain to enable any conclusions about the amount of autonomy which Taxila may or may not have possessed under different Greek rulers.