The Greeks in Bactria and India c10.s5.212

c10.s5.212

It is strongly held that the Saca speech of the Kushans was reduced to writing in Bactria,¹ and as it was written in Greek letters this could hardly have taken place before the Yueh-chi acquired Bactra as their capital. Various obscure rulers are known who probably belong to the century after the conquest and whose coins exhibit Greek elements;² some may have ruled bits of the one-time Greek kingdom, probably in the hills, or even ruled some Greek city as vassals of the Kushans, but of more importance is the Kushan Miaos (or Heraos), the first chieftain among the Yueh-chi to issue a Greek coinage. He will be considered in a later connection (App. 17 and p. 342); but if the suggestion there made be well founded, his coinage must have been struck (or modelled) for him in Kapisa, not in Bactria, and the question may therefore arise whether it was not at Kapisa that the Saca speech of the Kushans was reduced to writing. The use in that language of the Greek symbol for *sh*, the sign *p* (App. 18), gives no help; for though this sign occurs much earlier in north-west India than the coinage of the Kushan kings—it is found on the coins of Miaos (in the form P) about 50 B.C., and on some of those of Spalirises (p. 509) in the latter part of the first century B.C.—that does not prove that it was not also used in Bactria. *A priori*, the reduction of the Kushan language into Greek writing is more likely to have taken place at their capital Bactra than at Kapisa; but I can see no certainty. Though the Greek *language* must have soon perished, Greek *script* lasted on in Bactria (Tocharistan), and apparently in Shignan and Chitral also, for centuries, and even appears on Ephthalite coins³ (fifth century A.D.); and it has been supposed that Hsüan Tsiang's reference to an alphabet of twenty-five letters in use in Tocharistan in his day (seventh century) means the Greek alphabet, twenty-four letters and *p*.⁴ The much earlier disappearance of Greek script in India (p. 356) may have been partly due to the competition of Kharoshthi.