The Greeks in Bactria and India c10.s2.220

c10.s2.220

The fact has already been emphasised that Menander at this time was only Demetrius’ general, as Indian writers well understood: in the Yuga-purāna it is Demetrius who is supreme at Pātaliputra, in the Hāthigumphā inscription (if it really bears on the matter) it is Demetrius who orders the withdrawal, and in the Mahābhārata, while Demetrius and Apollodotus appear as kings of the Yavanas, Menander is not mentioned. Doubtless Menander was meant to be, and was, governor or viceroy for Demetrius of all the conquests south-eastward of the Jhelum, the line of division between the spheres of Apollodotus and himself; but it is quite uncertain when he became king. It was one thing for Demetrius to confer the royal title and a great measure of power upon Apollodotus, who was his brother or kinsman, and quite another to confer that title upon a general, a thing as yet without any precedent anywhere.¹ It is unlikely that Menander’s sphere was ever subject to Apollodotus, and it may be that Demetrius, from sheer necessity, made Menander king when he himself returned to fight Eucratides; though more probably Menander took the title himself when Demetrius was killed, in the usual form of a vote by his army. We simply do not know when the most famous of the Yavanas received, or assumed, the diadem.