The Greeks in Bactria and India c10.s2.225

c10.s2.225

It is unlikely that Alexander’s own conquest was of much help to his Greek successors. Leaving out of account the Paropamisadae, as belonging rather to the Iranian than to the Indian system, almost everything he did in India was wiped off the map within seven years of his death; the last Macedonian satrap, Peithon, quitted Gandhāra in 316,¹ and the whole of his Indian dominions fell into the hands of Chandragupta. If Indian literature remembered him at all it was only in the form of a bogey called Skanda, used to frighten naughty children;² many stories about him are found in the North-West, but the majority, where not modern, are probably due to Islam, which made him one of its heroes, though a few may be real reminiscences of the Bactrian Greeks. Of the cities he founded, the two Alexandrias on the Indus³ left no trace; it does not even follow that they were ever completed. Nicaea on the Jhelum may have weathered the storm, though that is purely conjectural (p. 328 n. 1). The only city which is recorded to have survived is Alexandria Bucephala on the east bank of the Jhelum,⁴ though there is no reasonable doubt about the Alexandria at the junction of the Chenab and the Indus (p. 247). Demetrius may also have found a few Greeks at Patala, or at one or two places in Gandhāra;⁵ that is about all. But if some of Alexander’s settlements did survive, we do not know in what shape they survived; clearly many of his Greek settlers must have quitted India with Eudamus and Peithon. What Alexander’s career did give to the Greek kings was not so much material help as an inspiration, the same inspiration as it had given to Chandragupta.