The Greeks in Bactria and India c10.s3.144

c10.s3.144

Before leaving Plato, it must be noticed that the four-horse chariot (*quadriga*) of the Sun on his coin is of interest in another connection, quite apart from his personality. The Sun's *quadriga* had long been a feature of Greek art¹—it had its place on the Parthenon—and had already appeared in the Greek East on coins of Andragoras and Vakhsuvar (? Oxyartes).² These coins, and especially that of Plato, supply one of the few definite instances (as opposed to assumptions) of a Greek artistic motive passing into Indian art through Bactria; they point the road which led to the relief on the Sūrya panel on a pillar at Bodh Gaya, dating from one of the kings of the Sunga dynasty and perhaps therefore not much later than Plato, on which ‘the Sun-god appears driving a four-horse chariot, manifestly copied from a Greek model’. ³ The Sun's *quadriga* was now started on a long journey; it appears in a Parthian house in Babylonia,⁴ in the art of Gandhāra and Central Asia,⁵ and is said to be a favourite motive in Sassanian art;⁶ very notable is the Sun's chariot (third century A.D.) with four winged horses in the vault over the great Buddha at Bamyan,⁷ once a Greek city. Professor Herzfeld has derived all these representations ultimately from the art of Greek Bactria;⁸ and Plato's coin supplies the missing link in his theory.⁹ But Professor Rostovtzeff has traced the Sun's *quadriga* in the Iranian art of South Russia back to the fourth century B.C.,¹⁰ and it still remains to be ascertained whether the original Greek and Iranian conceptions of that *quadriga* were independent of each other or, if not, how they were related. But however that may be, the coin-type of the unimportant Plato constitutes a most important nodal point in the travels of this artistic motive.