The Greeks in Bactria and India c10.s2.264

c10.s2.264

Kshatriya name-endings like -varman and -datta;¹ indeed a theory has been put forward that the ἐπιγαμία included in the treaty between Seleucus and Chandragupta meant a grant by the Indian king to the Greeks of the right to intermarry in the Kshatriya ‘colour’, that is, that he formally recognised them as Kshatriyas.² This theory cannot be supported, either from Strabo³ or in substance, for there seems to have been no *jus connubii* in India or any difficulty at this time in the marriage of persons of different ‘colours’;⁴ but the classification of Greeks as Kshatriyas was one more element in the opposition of Greek and Brahman, an opposition, it must be repeated, which had nothing to do with the Brahman religion. But it had something to do, indirectly, with the Buddhist religion; for that religion, though it cared nothing for race or ‘colour’, had in fact happened to make a special appeal to that Kshatriya ‘colour’ to which Gautama himself had belonged. Buddhism in fact at this time seems to have been something more than a monastic religion; it was also to some extent the creed of a warlike aristocracy,⁵ and it is of some importance for what follows to note that one cannot apply, or can only apply with great caution, to the second century B.C. the view, drawn from later times, that Buddhism tends to render unwarlike the peoples who profess it.