The Greeks in Bactria and India c10.s2.282

c10.s2.282

But I have given the story for the sake of a strange feature which has never been noticed. Pushyamitra’s route is from Pātaliputra to Sāgala, thence north-west, and thence to the southern ocean. But at the end of the Greek advance the Greek dominions lay as a great horse-shoe round the desert, from Pātaliputra to Sāgala, thence north-west, and thence to the southern ocean at Patalene and Surāshtra; and what the story does is to take Pushyamitra right round the Greek horse-shoe, persecuting as he goes. This cannot be accidental coincidence. Greeks, *i.e.* Greek propaganda, had something to do with this story; and that becomes almost a certainty when it is noticed that the only town mentioned by name, after leaving Pāṭaliputra, is Sāgala, and Sāgala was just about to become Menander’s capital. One need not postulate religious persecution; but if some people who did not desire Puṣyamitra’s rule *were* killed at Sāgala, that would have been given Demetrius, whose general Menander was about to invade the eastern Punjab, an opportunity for propaganda among the Madras which he would indeed have been blind to neglect: Menander was coming to save them from the oppression of the Sunga king. But the Madras killed at Sāgala had doubtless in actual fact been Buddhists, and, even if this were accidental, it might well be interpreted by Buddhists generally as religious persecution; the Greek leaders might think that they were helping Puṣyamitra’s enemies, but to the Buddhist world it meant that they were helping Buddhists;¹ would they or would they not, the Greek kings, in Indian eyes, inevitably became champions of Buddhism.