The Greeks in Bactria and India c10.s5.157

c10.s5.157

at all, but were the Ta-hia,¹ a theory which has worked utter confusion in the story. The modern form of the theory is that the Tochari came from Chinese Turkestan and conquered Bactria before the Yueh-chi, and were the Ta-hia whom the Yueh-chi subsequently conquered; and some scholars have accepted Ta-hia as a possible phonetic equivalent of Tocharia. But it has now been stated that this was not possible in the pronunciation of the second century B.C.;² and now that it has been shown that the Chinese in that century had the Tochari-togara name³ its whole basis is gone. There is not, and never has been, one scrap of evidence for the identification Tochari = Ta-hia except this alleged phonetic equivalence, and, even were that possible, all it would prove would be, not that the Ta-hia were the Tochari, but that philology, though a good servant to the historian, can be a bad master. The matter is simple. The conquest of Bactria, we have seen, lies between 141 and 128, and was almost certainly c. 130. The well-informed Apollodorus, in whose lifetime the event took place, said that the Tochari at the time were nomads.⁴ Chang-k'ien, who saw the Ta-hia in 128, said that the Ta-hia were communities of unwarlike traders living in walled towns.⁵ A conquering horde of nomads does not, in two or three years time, turn into communities of unwarlike traders living in walled towns; there is nothing else which need be said,⁶ except to regret the waste of labour and learning lavished on erecting theories upon such a basis.