The Greeks in Bactria and India c10.s5.204

c10.s5.204

For a considerable period after the conquest the coinage of the invading Yueh-chi consisted of more or less barbarous imitations of Greek coins, sometimes of those of Euthydemus but more usually of those of Heliocles;⁴ as the nomads could not possibly coin for themselves till they began to adopt a settled life, and as it cannot be said when that was, these coins must have been struck by Greeks or Bactrians. Three classes of these imitations are known, one with Greek legends only, one with mixed legends of rude Greek and Sogdian letters, and one with Sogdian letters only.¹ It would be natural to see in them the progressive loss of the Greek language, but it might also be that the divergences represent not different periods of time but different localities; much of their interest resides in the fact that they are early specimens of the Sogdian language,² which had therefore been reduced to writing under Greek rule. They *may* also indicate that in some towns native Bactrians had been in the service of the mints, like the Indian mint-officials in some of the late Greek kingdoms in India (pp. 356 *sq.*); but this more probably took place after the break-up of Greek rule, seeing that the last Greek king, Heliocles, did not employ native mint-officials in India. These coins also show that, whatever may have been the case under Greek rule, coins were now being produced elsewhere than in the royal mint at Bactra; these imitations, though made by people who still knew enough to give Heliocles a new type which he had never used himself,³ cannot well have been struck at Bactra, for that mint could not suddenly have become barbarised unless Bactra had been sacked, and such was certainly not the case: Chang-k'ien's reference,⁴ just after the conquest, to its 'markets for the sale of every sort of merchandise' show that it was undamaged. The nomads had no chance of taking such a strongly fortified city by military operations, but they could bring it to terms by ravaging its lands year after year; and Bactra must have made terms. No doubt for a considerable time it stood to the Yueh-chi in the same sort of quasi-independent relationship as Seleuceia for long did to the Parthians, paying however tribute for its land; in the nature of the case, nomads could not make a city their capital, *i.e.* the seat of their government, till they ceased to be nomads and adopted a settled life, and Bactra does not in fact appear as the Yueh-chi capital till much later.⁵ The process may have been perfectly peaceful, like the 'peaceful penetration' of the Greek cities of the Bosporan kingdom by the Sarmatians.⁶