The Greeks in Bactria and India c10.s2.284

c10.s2.284

A strange touch in the Yuga-purāṇa, of great importance, bears this out. The late author of this Sanscrit document as we have it, of Brahman sympathies and disliking the foreigner, might say that the effect of the Greek conquest (if indeed he refers here to the Greek conquest) was to turn the world upside down, confound the castes, and make Jack as good as his master;² and doubtless the Greeks did take little account of the four ‘colours’ and made use of anyone willing to support them. But he has also preserved traces of a very different view, probably from the original Prakrit chronicle or document on which the sections of our Yuga-purāṇa dealing with the Yavanas are based (see App. 4). For Demetrius appears as Dharmamita,³ that is, the name has been ‘adjusted’ to bring in the word Dharma and to make it signify ‘Friend of Justice’, and one can hardly mistake the reason: it is meant to recall the traditional Dharmaraja, the ideal King of Justice of Indian literature (see p. 256). There were, then, Indians to whom Demetrius appeared, not as a foreign conqueror, but as the King of Justice.