The Greeks in Bactria and India c10.s5.188

c10.s5.188

Some lower class Greeks, traders and shopkeepers (so far as that class were Greeks), were undoubtedly still there, though Chang-k’ien seemingly did not distinguish them from the more numerous Bactrians, unless by his remark about beards; it may well be that, in spite of his knowledge of the bazaars in Bactra, he was never himself inside one of the Greek cities. These Greeks must have remained till, their government gone, they were absorbed in the native population. As to the upper class, the larger part undoubtedly perished. A few may have retired into India, but there is no trace in that country of any great accession of Greek strength. One section—a very small one—is known to have been exterminated: the Greek coinage of Bactria remained fine to the end, and then the great Bactrian artists vanished from the world; no trace of their peculiar skill in portraiture ever occurs again, in India or anywhere else. The likeliest supposition is that one battle sufficed to destroy most of the Greek aristocracy, just as in Britain the Northumbrian nobility was destroyed by the Picts at Nectansmere. The great Bactrian barons, if they still existed, presumably shared the same fate; they can never have been a numerous class. Chang-k’ien never mentions them at all; but no deductions can be drawn from his silence, for neither he nor the Chinese historians mention the aristocracy of Parthia.