The Greeks in Bactria and India c10.s4.261

c10.s4.261

Two considerations confirm this. It has already been pointed out (p. 217) that Eucratides, when engaged in his struggle with Menander, called himself ‘King of Kings’ on a coin for his Indian subjects and that this must have had some connection with Menander being a Chakravartin, though it cannot be more exactly defined. But what seems quite conclusive is the story preserved by Plutarch² that after Menander's death the cities raised stupas (μνημεῖα) over his ashes. In Buddhist literature four kinds of men, and they only, are described as worthy of stupas³—Buddhas, Pratyeka Buddhas (solitary saints), disciples of a Buddha who have become saints, and kings who are Chakravartins; but the Buddhist stupas grew out of the older stupa of the Chakravartin,⁴ and it has been shown how the story of the funeral of Gautama Buddha himself was developed in order to make him the equal of such a monarch until the ritual observed became, in the story, nothing but the funeral ritual of a Chakravartin king.⁵ There is therefore no doubt about Menander: Plutarch's story means that after death he was believed to have received the honours which tradition said should be paid to a dead Chakravartin.⁶