The Greeks in Bactria and India c10.s5.36

c10.s5.36

What ultimately turned them southward is not known. The brief Chinese statement that after the defeat of 160 they went westward and occupied Ta-hia (Bactria)² is really two separate statements with a whole generation in time between them, the second statement merely giving the end of a lost chain of events. All we know is that these lost years were occupied in fighting and in attempts to settle somewhere; for in 128 they told Chang-k'ien that they were weary of trekking and fighting and only wanted to live in peace,³ and this does not refer to the story we know, for by 128 a new generation had grown up to whom the defeats of 174 and 160 were at most only memories of childhood. Sometime between 141 and 128—we shall see that it cannot have been much, if at all, before 130—they crossed the Jaxartes westward of Ferghana,⁴ went southward, and put an end to the Greek kingdom of Bactria; in 128 the horde was camped somewhere between Samarcand and the Oxus,⁵ not having yet moved across the Oxus into Bactria proper (Ta-hia), though it was theirs, *i.e.* tributary.