The Greeks in Bactria and India c10.s4.253

c10.s4.253

But much more important is the wheel. It has often been supposed to be the wheel of the Buddhist Dhamma; but the other symbol on the coin, a palm-branch—the Greek palm of victory—has nothing to do with the Buddhist Dhamma, and the eight-spoked wheel had already occurred on Indian punch-marked coins, where its rarity suggests that it had no religious significance.² The palm of victory points inevitably to the other interpretation of Menander’s wheel, which has never lacked support: it is the wheel of the Chakravartin³ (originally a disk of gold placed behind a fire altar to represent the Sun),⁴ and it means that Menander claimed, or others claimed for him, that he was a Chakravartin, a King of the Wheel, one of those supreme rulers who from time to time appeared here or there.⁵ The power of a Chakravartin, though great, was not unlimited—the dragon-kings of Rāmagrāma had defied Asoka when he desired of them their portion of Buddha’s ashes for his redistribution—but it had one constant feature: a Chakravartin