The Greeks in Bactria and India c10.s2.99

c10.s2.99

One point in this account, the taking of Sāketa, is further confirmed from the Indian side by a statement of the grammarian Patañjali (made merely to illustrate the right tense to use for an event which has just happened), ‘The Yavana was besieging Sāketa.’¹ Patañjali’s date has generally been put about 150 B.C. on the strength of his supposed reference to Pushyamitra’s horse sacrifice as a contemporary event, and the dating so reached has been used to date Menander’s advance to about 150. There is nothing in this, for it is generally admitted that Patañjali’s grammatical examples are, or in any particular case may be, not necessarily his own composition but traditional examples, put together before his own time;² in fact a recent authority, I venture to think conclusively, puts him much later than 150.³ What Patañjali does show is that the Greek invasion produced such an impression that it could be used as a commonplace illustration in grammars.