The Greeks in Bactria and India c10.s4.82

c10.s4.82

The find-spots show that the most northerly people were the wealthy Audumbaras,¹ whose country was on the upper Beas in the Gurdaspur and Hoshiarpur districts, with its centre perhaps about Pathankot; their location shows that Ptolemy has not only made Kulindrene too large but has placed it too far to the north. This people manufactured a fine cotton cloth, kotumbara, which they traded to Sāgala;² apparently they were Buddhists,³ and some of their coins after Greek rule ended imitated Greek types, the ‘elephant and humped bull’ type of Apollodotus I⁴ and the regular type of Demetrius, Heracles standing and crowning himself,⁵ so freely imitated by the Sacas. Southward of the Audumbaras were the Trigartas,⁶ between the Ravi and the Sutlej with their centre about Jullundur, and the Kunindas⁷ eastward of the Trigartas, somewhere between the Sutlej (Ludhiana district) and the Jumna at Saharanpur in the United Provinces; their centre may have been about Ambala. The coins of the powerful Yaudheyas⁸ have been found in many places in the Punjab, but especially between the Sutlej and the Jumna; large finds have been made at Sonipat a little north of Delhi, and many types are said to have come from near Saharanpur. Geographically, their territory can only have lain southward of the Kunindas, with whose coins some of their own have affinities,⁹ and of the Trigartas, with whom they are connected in literature;¹⁰ it may perhaps be called the Delhi country with a large extension northward and north-eastward. Lastly come the Ārjunāyanas,¹¹ somewhere between Delhi and Agra; they must have marched with the Yaudheyas, with whom they are connected both in literature and by coin-legends, and were presumably Mathurā’s nearest neighbours.