The Greeks in Bactria and India c10.s6: Chapter VIII. Greeks and Sacas in India

The Greeks in Bactria and India c10.s6

Language: English

Chapter VIII. Greeks and Sacas in India

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WITH the death of Menander the little thread of literary information which has been our guide through the maze breaks off, and except for one episode the story of Greek rule in India can be taken no further from written history. In places that rule lasted for well over a century after Menander’s death, and a large number of kings are known: taking Bactria and India together, and assuming that the first Diodotus took the royal title, we know from literature and coins of thirty-six kings and one queen, Agathocleia;¹ a Kharoshthi inscription has added one more name, Theodamas.² The labours of numismatists³ have succeeded in producing a broad outline of events, and some points of interest can be recovered, notably as regards the revival a generation before the end; that is all, for no Greek historian seems to have taken the story of the Farther East further down than the death of Mithridates II in 87 B.C. (pp. 45, 48). Putting it very roughly, until the coming of the Sacas the house of Eucratides ruled most of the country between the Hindu Kush and the Jhelum, though we may meet some Euthydemid kings to the west of that river, and the houses of Euthydemus and Menander ruled from the Jhelum to Mathurā; somewhere about 80 B.C. the Sacas, who had previously established a kingdom in Sind and the Greek sea-provinces to the southward, came up the Indus, occupied Taxila and Gandhāra, and drove a wedge in between the two realms or state-groups. To which house or group the greater number of the known kings belong has been elucidated from their coin-types,¹ and these, together sometimes with identical monograms, furnish the only safe ground; attempts to group the kings by artistic considerations² do not, in my opinion, take us very far, for the method is subjective and is open to the accident of a better engraver turning up in some town. Some of the known names are probably sub-kings.

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¹ In alphabetical order: Agathocleia, Agathocles, Amyntas, Antialcidas, Antimachus (2), Apollodotus (2), Apollophanes, Archebius, Artemidorus, Demetrius (2), Diodotus (2), Diomedes, Dionysius, Epander, Eucratides (2), Euthydemus (2), Heliocles, Hermaeus, Hippostratus, Lysias, Menander, Nicias, Pantaleon, Peucolaos, Philoxenus, Plato, Polyxenus, Telephus, Theophilus, Zoilus (2). I do not include Hermaeus’ queen Calliope, as she did not reign alone.

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² *CII* p. 6 no. III; see p. 323. For the supposed mention of some of the later kings in the *Yuga-purāna* see App. 4.

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³ For the coins of these later kings see especially *BMC* under their names; Whitehead *NC* pp. 294 sqq. and *Lahore Cat.*; *CHI* pp. 552 sqq., 557 sqq., 586 sqq. Two kings, Peucolaos (Whitehead *NC* p. 324) and Polyxenus (*Lahore Cat.* p. 53), were discovered after the publication of *BMC*.

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¹ This is the basis of Rapson’s scheme in *CHI*, which is much the best, and which, with certain alterations and additions, I follow in outline till near the end.

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² Whitehead’s scheme of three groups, west to east, according to the quality of the art. Certainly on the whole the west is rather better than the east, though I sometimes cannot follow his grouping as regards individual kings. But a recent discovery has borne out his view about Zoilus’ two coinages (p. 319).

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In the western group, Heliocles was succeeded by Antialcidas, who must have begun to reign, or reign alone, not later than *c.* 130. He was a king of some power: he certainly ruled from the Hindu Kush to the Jhelum, as his silver coins show the full type of Alexandria-Kapisa³ and the inscription on the Besnagar column⁴ in Vidisā proves that he reigned in Taxila; the possibility that he still retained some footing north of the Hindu Kush has already been noticed (p. 273) in connection with his title 'the Victorious', and on the Besnagar column he is 'the Great King'. His known rule in Taxila, and the *pilei* of the Dioscuri on his copper coins, furnish the reason for the belief that henceforth the *pilei* were the type of Taxila. He was evidently related to Heliocles,⁵ but how is unknown. His date depends largely on the Besnagar inscription, which shows him sending an ambassador, Heliodorus son of Dion, to a Sunga king Bhāgabhadra in Vidisā, then in the fourteenth year of his reign. This inscription is very important for another matter, to be noticed later; here it need only be said that the list of Sunga kings in the Purāṇas⁶ knows no Bhāgabhadra, and he is generally identified with the last king but one of that list, Bhāga or Bhāgavata, whose fourteenth year is supposed to fall round about 90 B.C.,⁷ though it has been put much earlier.⁸ A reign of some forty years is possible enough, but there are considerable difficulties, which we shall come to later, in taking Antialcidas down to *c.* 90 B.C.; for five kings in Gandhāra have to come in between Antialcidas and Maues, and the Saca (Parsii) occupation of Kabul, which was definitely before 87, was almost certainly after Antialcidas' death (see p. 472); it might therefore be better either to identify Bhāgabhadra with some earlier king or to suppose that Bhāga was earlier than the Purāna chronology makes him, and date the inscription not later than *c.* 100 B.C.

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³ *BMC* pp. 25-6, Zeus enthroned holding Nike on his hand, and before him a small elephant or the forepart of one.

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⁴ Published by Sir John Marshall, *JRAS* 1909 p. 1055; cf. J. Ph. Vogel, *ASI* 1908-9 p. 126. Much discussed since. See further pp. 380, 406.

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⁵ They use a common type, not found elsewhere: *CHI* pp. 559, 590.

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⁶ Given in *CHI* p. 518.

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⁷ *Ib.* p. 521.

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⁸ V. A. Smith made it 108 B.C.

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A difficult problem is the ‘joint’ coin of Antialcidas and Lysias.¹ Lysias on his own coins used the type of Demetrius, Heracles crowning himself; he sometimes wore Demetrius' elephant-scalp,² and adopted Demetrius' title *ἀνίκητος*; that he was a descendant, presumably a grandson, of Demetrius seems self-evident. But Antialcidas certainly belonged to the rival line of Eucratides, as his type ‘pilei of the Dioscuri’ shows; and the ‘joint’ coin is so difficult that the view has been put forward that (for once) Lysias' types have not their natural meaning but are merely local.³ But *ἀνίκητος* cannot be local, and that title, combined with the elephant-scalp, leaves no doubt who Lysias was, for the combination of these two things had been of the very essence of Demetrius' royalty (pp. 131 *sq.*). The important thing is that at some period Lysias was able to coin in a Greek mint, but all the mints known were in the hands of Antialcidas or Strato; at the same time the elephant on Lysias' coins (which might, however, be the elephant of Taxila), and more especially the little elephant on his aegis (which cannot well refer to Taxila), have been interpreted—in the latter case there seems no alternative—to mean that he regarded himself as under the protection of the elephant god of Kapisa.⁴

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¹ *BMC* p. 166: obv., βασιλέως ἀνικήτου Λυσίου and bust of Heracles; rev., Maharajasa jayadharasa (victorious) Amtialikidasa and *pilei* of the Dioscuri.

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² *BMC* Pl. X, 6. On one of this series he wears instead the flat kausia of the Euthydemids: Lahore Cat. p. 31 no. 156.

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³ Rapson in *CHI* p. 559.

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⁴ Whitehead *NC* p. 326 no. 4.

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I see only one way to fit these facts together. It must be supposed that when Heliocles recovered Bactria some son of Demetrius, either Demetrius II or Agathocles, had survived and had continued to maintain himself in some of the hill provinces, cut off from the great road, the capitals, and the mints; as he had no mint, no trace of him during this period would remain. Lysias was his son,⁵ and his ‘joint’ coin with Antialcidas refers to a rapprochement, probably a treaty of permanent peace, between the two factions, the end of the long feud of the rival houses;¹ Lysias must have kept his hill kingdom but become in some form an associate—it could not here be sub-king—of Antialcidas, as he henceforth coined in his mints. For all four of Lysias’ monograms appear on Antialcidas’ coins² (though the latter has a couple of others also), which is decisive proof that they shared the same moneyers; there are arguments for both Kapisa and Taxila as the mint,³ and probably Lysias used both. The ‘joint’ coin of course does not express the treaty, though it refers to it; it is not a joint coin at all, but a coin of Lysias, who (though Antialcidas was probably the more powerful) has naturally allotted to himself the obverse and the Greek legend; probably there were coins of Antialcidas with the position reversed. This treaty may be the reason why coins exist which show Antialcidas wearing the flat kausia of the Euthydemids⁴ and Lysias wearing the helmet of Eucratides;⁵ and an unexplained coin of Antialcidas, on which the elephant-god and his elephant are marching,⁶ might relate to the same event, which would doubtless have been celebrated with some sort of a display or procession. The reason for such a reconciliation is obvious: the Saca menace was already coming into view.

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⁵ His face is not old enough for him to have been Demetrius' son.

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¹ There is a famous precedent in the treaty of permanent peace between Antigonus Gonatas and Antiochus I, which stood for generations.

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² Cf. *BMC* p. 29 and Pl. XXXI, 2 with pp. 25–8.

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³ This depends on analysis of the monograms. I need not give it.

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⁴ *BMC* Pl. VII, 11, 13; *Lahore Cat.* p. 32 nos. 167–83.

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⁵ *BMC* Pl. VIII, 7. It might also explain why on two coins (*BMC* Pl. X, 10, 12) Strato too wears Eucratides’ helmet with the bull’s horn and ear.

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⁶ Whitehead *NC* p. 325 no. 21, Pl. XV, 5; he calls it a ‘march past’.

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Antialcidas was the last king to rule all the three kingdoms west of the Jhelum—Taxila, Gandhāra, Paropamisadae; on his death his realm was divided, or broke up, into its component parts. His successor in Taxila was Archebius, who struck a certain number of tetradrachms⁷ and was certainly succeeded by the Saca Maues;⁸ his coinage is better artistically than that of his contemporaries,⁹ which means that a better engraver had appeared in Taxila. In Gandhāra five kings are known between Antialcidas and Maues:¹⁰ Diomedes, Epander, and Philoxenus all use the humped bull of Pushkalāvatī; Peucolaos may be ‘king Peucela’ (pp. 244 sq.) and exhibits the Fortune of Pushkalāvatī on his rare coinage;¹ Artemidorus’ rule in Pushkalāvatī is certain both from his name and his types, and it is quite certain that his immediate successor was Maues.² The coins of Peucolaos and Artemidorus are extremely rare, and indicate very short reigns. As all coined in Pushkalāvatī, we cannot suppose a number of little kingdoms in the separate satrapies of Gandhāra; but some might have been sub-kings. The matter is complicated by Artemidorus and Philoxenus³ use of the title ἀνίκητος, which may signify some connection with Lysias; it is likely enough that, if I am right about the peace between Antialcidas and Lysias, the two houses were intermarrying, as they did later (p. 337), and in fact Philoxenus uses the type of Antimachus II, ‘King on prancing horse’.⁴ It seems probable, therefore, that the one-time simple division—house of Eucratides west of the Jhelum, house of Euthydemus east of it—needs a good deal of qualification.

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⁷ Thirty were found in 1917 in the Kabul hoard, Whitehead, *NC* p. 315.

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⁸ Rapson in *CHI* p. 559; his reason is conclusive. See Herzfeld, *Sakastan* p. 97.

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⁹ See for example the coin figured in *CHI* Pl. XXX d.

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¹⁰ *CHI* p. 557.

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¹ Whitehead *NC* p. 324 no. 20; *Lahore Cat.* p. 80 no. 642. The British Museum has a specimen.

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² *CHI* p. 558 (conclusive); see Herzfeld, *Sakastan*, p. 97.

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³ There is a coin of Philoxenus with the legend badly blundered, Whitehead *JASB* VI, 1910, Num. Supp. XIV p. 559 no. 8, which cannot have been struck at Pushkalāvatī; he may have tried to coin in some province, unless it be a later imitation.

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⁴ *BMC* pp. 56, 55; cf. Pl. XIII, 6 with 3. I am not using von Sallet’s ‘joint’ coin of Archebius and Philoxenus, as its genuineness is said to be doubtful: Rapson, *Indian Coins* 1897 p. 6.

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One thing may, I think, be left out of the question. Owing to the fact that the system of sub-kings has not been understood, the large number of the later Greek kings in India has been explained as meaning much civil war and one king ousting another.⁵ There seems little trace of this, and less probability. Only one usurper, I think, can be detected—Telephus. Only one overstrike, so far as I know, occurs—that of a coin of Apollodotus II by Zoilus II Soter⁶ in the eastern Punjab; and though overstriking is the usual accompaniment of conquest, every overstrike does not necessarily mean a war, unless we have some other reason for supposing one. There had been civil wars enough in the middle of the second century; but once we get to the first century B.C. they are very difficult to credit. The Greeks in the north-west of India, with Bactria, Seistan, and the sea-provinces all lost, had become politically isolated in a vast world of ‘barbarism’, and its dead pressure must have tended to hold them together, as the pressure of the coloured population in South Africa is tending to unite Briton and Boer. The threat of the Saca invasion from the south was already apparent; such a peace treaty as I have supposed between Antialcidas and Lysias falls logically enough into its place. Had the Yueh-chi not been so tired of fighting and so anxious for a quiet life, Greek rule would probably have ended before it did; as it was, the Greeks were for the time safe from the side of Bactria.

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⁵ Whitehead *NC* p. 308.

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⁶ *Ib.*

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It will be best to defer considering the Paropamisadae for the present and to turn to the eastern group. It has been noticed that Menander was succeeded by his widow Agathocleia as regent for their son Strato. She was the first woman actually to bear rule in any Hellenistic kingdom, though the rule of queens had not been unknown in old Macedonia; Parthia of course promptly copied, and when Mithridates I died in 138-7 he left his queen Ri..nu regent for his young son Phraates II;¹ subsequently the rule of women became common among the Ptolemies, and one queen of Ptolemaic blood, Cleopatra Thea, virtually ruled what remained of the Seleucid empire. Strato I is shown by his coin-portraits to have had a very long reign,² associated at the end with his grandson Strato II; in middle age he wore a beard, as two Seleucid kings had done (p. 299). A group of three kings, Apollodotus II Philopator, Dionysius, and Zoilus II Soter, show a common and peculiar monogram on their coins, some of which were therefore all struck by the same moneyer in one mint;³ a hoard found on the upper Sutlej contained coins of these three kings and of no others,⁴ and a hoard of 200 coins of Zoilus was found near Sāgala (Sialkot).⁵ Another king, Apollophanes, whose coins are extremely rare but show Euthydemid types, certainly belongs to the same group, as another peculiar monogram which he shares with Zoilus II and Strato again shows that at one time all three shared a common moneyer;⁶ these monograms mean that these four kings—Apollodotus II, Dionysius, Zoilus II, and Apollophanes—were sub-kings, or perhaps in some cases successors, of Strato. Yet another king whose coins are extremely rare, Polyxenus, should from his types be a member of this group.¹ All the kings here mentioned (including Agathocleia) use Menander's regular type of Athena Alkis on their coins, and must therefore, it would seem, have either belonged to his family or governed some part of his one-time kingdom. A peculiar statement in Plutarch (p. 48 n. 5) may mean that after Menander's death the eastern capital was shifted from Sāgala to Bucephala, which appears later as (probably) the capital of Hippostratus (p. 326).

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¹ A. T. Clay, *Babylonian records in the library of J. Pierpont Morgan* II p. 53; on the date, E. H. Minns, *JHS* xxxv, 1915, p. 34.

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² Rapson in *Corolla Numismatica* 1906 p. 245.

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³ *CHI* p. 553. The monogram in question is shown in *BMC* pp. 37 no. 7, 51 no. 1, 52 no. 3.

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⁴ S. P. Noe, *A bibliography of Greek coin-hoards*, NNM 1925 p. 180.

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⁵ Whitehead *NC* p. 308.

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⁶ For this monogram see *BMC* pp. 54 no. 1, 52 no. 6, 40 no. 7.

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¹ *CHI* p. 588 = *Lahore Cat.* p. 53 no. 371. On another coin, no. 372, he uses the Gorgon's head of Demetrius and Menander.

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How Strato governed Sind and Surastrene, or whether these provinces had broken off prior to the Saca conquest, is quite unknown; nothing of their history can be recovered. But as the later Saca rulers in Surastrene and Malva, Nahapana and Castana, seem to have copied the coins of Apollodotus II,² they at any rate had them to copy, and this king, who from his name was presumably a descendant of Apollodotus I Soter, may therefore have had something to do with the government in the southern provinces which Apollodotus I had originally conquered; he was not in the direct line, and may have been quite content to serve Menander's son, who *was* in the direct line, as Antimachus II served Menander (p. 230). But there are two considerable difficulties about Apollodotus II. A hoard of 221 coins was found at Amarkot near Dera Ismail Khan on the Indus which consisted solely of drachmae of the two kings named Apollodotus—82 of Soter, 96 of Philopator, 43 too worn to say.³ If this hoard stood alone, few would doubt that, as the older numismatists believed, Soter and Philopator were the same person. But it seems certain that they were not: Philopator's monograms, and notably his Kharoshthi letters, suffice. The hoard *might* furnish some further reason for supposing that Philopator governed Sind and the southern provinces; but the absence from the hoard of all coins of any king but these two, who were apparently a good distance apart in time, is inexplicable on any ordinary grounds, and one must suppose that it was a freak collection made by somebody who claimed kinship with the line of Apollodotus and collected only the coins of the two kings of that name. The other difficulty concerns his date. It has been seen that the reigns of Dionysius, Zoilus II, and himself, or parts of them, must fall within the lifetime of a single moneyer, and Apollodotus II should come before Zoilus II, as Zoilus overstruck one of his coins; this would agree with the natural supposition that he was a grandson of Apollodotus I and Zoilus II a grandson of Zoilus I (below). But there exists a coin of Apollodotus II which has been overstruck by Azes¹ with the ‘naval victory’ type with which he overstruck coins of Hippostratus when he put an end to Greek rule in the eastern Punjab (p. 349); and this would *prima facie* make Apollodotus II a contemporary of Hippostratus, reigning till about 30 B.C. But this is so impossible to reconcile both with the Zoilus overstrike and with the fact that none of the coins of Apollodotus II show the square omicron that it must be taken to mean that Azes after his victory, till he could reorganise things, overstruck any older coins he could get, as Euthydemus had once done in Bactria (p. 104).

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² Rapson, *Indian Coins* p. 20.

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³ W. Vost, *JASB* v, 1909, Num. Supp. xi.

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¹ Lahore Cat. p. 123 no. 244.

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It was the discovery of the great Bajaur hoard² which has added to the list of kings the second Zoilus.³ This hoard consisted of nearly new coins of three early kings, Apollodotus I, Menander, and Antimachus II, with a single coin of Zoilus which had obviously belonged to the man who actually buried the hoard. A hoard like this was probably buried during some invasion, and there is a choice of two dates, Heliocles’ invasion of Gandhāra between 150 and 140 B.C., or the Saca conquest of Gandhāra round about 70 B.C.; without doubt the earlier date is the right one. There was then a Zoilus connected with Gandhāra just after Menander’s death. It had been pointed out before the discovery of this hoard that Zoilus had two distinct currencies, clearly distinguished in style, legends, types, and monograms, one of which suggested the eastern Punjab while the affinities of the other were with Gandhāra;⁴ and the two currencies show different titles, Soter and Dikaios. It has been seen that Zoilus Soter belonged to the eastern group of kings connected with Strato; and Zoilus Dikaios, who is connected with Gandhāra, must be earlier, perhaps one of the missing sub-kings of Menander, whom he evidently survived. Had he been merely driven across the Jhelum by Heliocles into Strato’s sphere, his monograms and the style of his coins would naturally have changed, but no reason is apparent why he should have changed his types, still less his title; and it must I think be supposed that there were two kings of the name,¹ Soter being a descendant—presumably grandson—of Dikaios.

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² M. F. C. Martin, *JASB* XXIII, 1927, Num. Supp. XL p. 18. See p. 229.

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³ Coins: *BMC* pp. 52-3.

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⁴ Whitehead *NC* p. 308. The two coins *BMC* Pl. XII, 10 and 11, show the difference clearly.

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¹ As Martin suggested, *op. cit.* p. 19. But he did not notice Whitehead on Zoilus.

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The beginning of the end for all the Greek kingdoms in India was the Saca conquests. After the Suren, whom Mithridates II had put in command of the country east of the Persian desert (p. 499), had broken the Saca invasion of Parthia and had recovered the country from Herat northward to Merv, the larger body of the invaders, driven by Parthian pressure, had entered India from Seistan (p. 321 n. 4), while the victorious Parthians brought into subjection the previously existing Saca state in Sacastene on the lower Helmand. The victories of the Suren took place somewhere between 124 and 115 (p. 281), and the Saca invasion of India may have begun any time after *c.* 120. The route of the main body of the invaders is unknown, but if they started from Sacastene they probably took the usual road which Craterus had once followed, by Kandahar and the Bolan or the Mulla pass, and if so their first conquest from the Greeks would have been the satrapy of Abiria on the Indus, which is known to have been theirs. They had come steadily southward since leaving the Jaxartes and the Caspian steppes, and southward from Abiria they still went, conquering Patalene and the Greek sea-provinces of Cutch and Surastrene; Indian tradition remembered their conquest of Sind, and how they went down the Indus in ships to the conquest of Kathiawar.² This kingdom, extending from Abiria to Surastrene, was their original kingdom in India and remained in that shape long enough to find its way into Greek tradition; it is Ptolemy’s ‘Indo-Scythia’ and may be roughly dated *c.* 110 to *c.* 80 B.C. (p. 233).

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² K. P. Jayaswal, *JBORS* XVI, 1930, pp. 233-4; Sten Konow, *JIH* XII, 1933, pp. 18-19.

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The loss of Patalene and Surastrene meant to the Greek kings the loss of political control over the sea-ports which gave access by sea to the western world, but the sea-ports themselves may not have been much affected. Demetrias-Patala, we shall see, remained a Greek city for some time longer, and its position under Saca rule doubtless resembled that of the Greek cities in Parthia, as Seleuceia or Susa, under the rule of the Parthians (p. 30). The political forms at Barygaza while it was under Greek rule are unknown. If the old shrines or temples (*ἱερά*) in the neighbourhood mentioned in the Periplus (p. 148) were Greek, as that work implies, then Barygaza was presumably a Greek *polis*, the missing capital of Surastrene; but one does not know how far one can rely on the archaeological knowledge of the merchant who wrote that work, and it is safer to draw no deductions from these temples. But there must at any rate have been a considerable settlement there of Greek traders—even in the middle of the first century A.D. the town was still using the currency of Greek kings—and that settlement still continued in being under Saca rule, for there is a clear indication of its existence in the reign of Augustus. A king Pandion or Porus (? king of the Pāndhya kingdom in Southern India) sent an embassy to him with a letter written on parchment in Greek,¹ and on the way the embassy picked up a gymnosophist, who accompanied them; this man belonged to Barygaza,² so it must have been in Barygaza that the envoys got their letter written. Greek then was still a living language there about the Christian Era, and may have persisted for some time as a lingua franca for traders from the West; one may recall that the women of Surastrene long continued to use the Greek salutation χαῖρε or χαίρειν (p. 235). But whether the Yavanas mentioned in an inscription of A.D. 106³ had much to do with the Bactrian Greeks may be doubted.

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¹ Nicolaus of Damascus in Strabo xv, 686, 719.

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² Nicolaus' Βαργόση must be Barygaza, though Strabo did not recognise it. Renou, *La géographie de Ptolémée* 1925, Index s.v. Βαρυγάζα, made the identification.

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³ De la Vallée-Poussin p. 216.

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With the further conquests of the Sacas in the south, outside of the Greek provinces, I am not at the moment concerned. But somewhere about 80 B.C. they started northward from Abiria up the Indus⁴ to attack the Greek centres in the north, under a leader whose name in Greek was Maues or Mauakes, in Kharoshthi Moa or Moga (p. 496). The same name, Mauakes (Mu-ku'a), had been borne by the Saca king of Ferghana in 101 B.C. (p. 308); if I am right in my belief that the Saca rulers of Ferghana at this time belonged to the Sai-wang (pp. 278 sq.), Maues may have belonged to the same people, some of whom, we have seen, must have come south with the Sacaraucae; Maues' power would explain the insistence of the Chinese sources on the Sai-wang ultimately reaching and ruling 'Ki-pin' (see p. 277 n. 6).

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⁴ Cunningham's view that they came up the Indus and not through the passes is now generally accepted: Thomas, *JRAS* 1906 p. 216; Rapson, *CHI* p. 567; de la Vallée-Poussin p. 235; Herzfeld, *Paikuli* pp. 38 sq.; Konow, *CII* p. xxxi. But no one seems to have noticed that Ptolemy is conclusive on the matter.

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The early coins of Maues bear the simple legend 'Of King Maues'. It would be tempting to ascribe these early coins of his to the kingdom of 'Indo-Scythia' and to suppose that they were struck in Demetrias- Patala, which was still a Greek city in the third quarter of the first century B.C.¹ and, though there is no trace of a royal mint there, could doubtless have produced them; but this must be rejected, for Maues cannot have led the original inyasion from Sacastene (that might mean a reign of sixty years or more), and if his early coins belonged to ‘Indo-Scythia’ there should also be coins of his predecessor in rule, which do not exist. The early coins must be taken to be Maues’ first coins after he got control of the Taxila mint; as one shows the Apollo and tripod of Apollodotus,² another an exact copy of the elephant’s head of Demetrius,³ and a third the trotting horse which had first appeared on later imitations of the coins of Heliocles,⁴ they indicate a comprehensive claim on the part of Maues to all the Greek dominions west of the Jhelum. He was in possession of Taxila before but not long before c. 77 B.C. (App. 16); the conquest of Gandhāra cannot be put much before 70, as there are five kings to come in between Antialcidas and himself, or much after, as time is required for the subsequent events in the Paropamisadae (post). After the occupation of Taxila, but later than the Taxila copper-plate of c. 77 B.C., Maues took the title ‘Great King of Kings’ in imitation of Mithridates II; doubtless he was emphasising a claim to be as good a man as the king who had expelled his people from Parthia.

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¹ This is shown by the cave inscription Nasik 19, see p. 257 n. 3.

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² *BMC* p. 72 no. 6; Cunningham, *Coins of the Sakas* (the fullest catalogue), *NC* 1890 p. 132 no. 14.

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³ *BMC* p. 68 no. 1; Cunningham *ib.* p. 131 no. 6.

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⁴ *BMC* p. 72 no. 28; Cunningham *ib.* p. 133 no 15.

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One detail of the Saca conquest has survived on the coinage: Maues’ fleet defeated a Greek fleet on the Indus, which gave him control of the river and opened the way to Taxila. This victory must have been a decisive event, as it is the event which Maues celebrated on his coins. One coin shows Poseidon with his trident—the usual symbolism of a naval victory—trampling on a river-god;⁵ on another Poseidon, while he still tramples on the river-god, hurls his thunderbolt at a small figure clinging to an *aphlaston*, the stern erection of a (presumably sinking) galley.⁶

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⁵ *BMC* p. 70 no. 15; Cunningham *ib.* p. 134 no. 22, cf. nos. 25, 26; *Lahore Cat.* p. 100 no. 20.

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⁶ *BMC* p. 71 no. 17, Pl. XVII, 2; Cunningham *ib.* pp. 106, 134 no. 23; *Lahore Cat.* p. 101 nos. 23, 24; *ASI* 1912–13 p. 47 no. 15, 1928–9 p. 65 no. 13 (both from Taxila).

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Maues' conquest of Taxila and Gandhāra cut off the Greeks of the eastern Punjab from those of the Paropamisadae; but it is likely that a few Greeks, instead of coming under Saca rule, were driven, or retreated, up into the hills, and that petty Greek princelets, cut off from cities and mints and not always able to coin,¹ maintained themselves in the hill valleys till their race merged in some native line and nothing remained but the legend of the descent of various native rulers from Alexander (p. 408), just as seems to have happened on the Bactrian side of the mountains (pp. 302 sq.). One such princelet may have been the ancestor of the ‘King Theodamas’ who has left no coins but whose signet, with his name in Kharoshthi, was found in Bajaur,² and who apparently lived in the first century A.D.; another, whose published coin is said to have come from the Paropamisadae and who was therefore probably later than the loss of that country by the Greeks, used the legend ‘King Antiochus’, whether that was his name or whether he was emphasising his Seleucid lineage.³ So far as can be traced, no Greek king ever became a Saca vassal. The Sacas, however, like the Parthians, whom they seem to have resembled, were not mere destroyers, but were ready to take advantage of and utilise the superior civilisation of the conquered Greeks; they retained the Greek provincial administration (pp. 241 sqq.) and coined in the Greek mints with a similar bilingual coinage, while the Greek cities, what few there were, kept some autonomy (p. 352 sq.). The Sacas simply stepped into the shoes of the Greeks; Indian writers regularly classed them with the Yavanas, and regarded them, as they regarded the Yavanas, as imperfect Kshatriyas (p. 173 n. 6).

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¹ There is a class of round bronze coins (BMC p. 112) with debased Greek and Kharoshthi legends, both illegible, and types a humped bull and a Bactrian camel. Could these be coins of refugee princelets northward of Gandhāra?

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² CII p. 6 no. III.

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³ A. von Sallet, Z. für Num. xx, 1897, p. 219, who compares it in style to the Hyrcodes coins, p. 305 n. 2. Legend ΑΣΙΛΕΩΣ ΙΤΙΟΧΟΥ, and Greek letter K.

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But Maues could not, or did not, conquer the Greeks of the eastern Punjab; they seem to have held the line of the Jhelum successfully (p. 329), which implies that the Indian peoples immediately concerned were still on their side. But before Maues came, the eastern Greeks had already lost Mathurā and the country between Mathurā and the eastern boundary of the Madras, the Ravi. According to the coins, the last Greek king to rule Mathurā itself was Strato I in conjunction with his grandson Strato II,⁴ a fact which seems to indicate that the eastern kingdom remained in one hand as long as Strato I lived. As we have seen, he was a young boy when Menander died between 150 and 145; allowing for his long life and for the fact that at the end his grandson was associated with him in the kingdom, Mathurā cannot well have been lost before 100 B.C. or thereabouts, and a date for its loss of *c.* 100 B.C., or possibly a little later—anyhow before 90 B.C.—would agree very well with all other indications.¹

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⁴ CHI p. 575.

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¹ The *Purāṇas*, except the *Yuga-purāṇa*, all give eight kings of the Yavanas in India (there were of course far more) but the names and duration of rule differ (*Lévi, Quid de Graecis* p. 11). These lists are valueless; the one said to be the oldest and usually quoted, that of the *Vayu-purāṇa* (p. 133 n. 3), is in utter confusion chronologically and is not true for any one place in India. But the figure, eighty-two years, for the duration of Yavana rule which Cunningham cited, *NC* 1872 p. 185, as it is not a round number, might be a real tradition for some particular place; if so, that place must be Mathurā, as the figure is far too small for anywhere else unless Sind or Surastrene, and they cannot come in question because later Puranic history is confined to the United Provinces and Bihar (*CHI* p. 307). This would make the loss of Mathurā shortly after 100 B.C., which agrees well enough with the view in the text, based on coins.

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How the Greeks came to lose these provinces east of the Ravi is unknown, except that it had nothing to do with the Sacas; they contained no Greek centres, they were perhaps lightly held, and granting that Greek rule may have been acceptable to this or that Indian people in 180 B.C., circumstances might well have altered eighty years later. Most of the peoples east of the Ravi already noticed as within Menander’s empire (p. 239)—Audumbaras, Trigartas, Kunindas, Yaudheyas, Ārjunāyanas—began to coin in the first century B.C.,² which means that they had become independent kingdoms or republics; but the coins do not all tell the same story. Those of the two southernmost peoples begin somewhere about 100 B.C. and bear the legends ‘Victory of the Ārjunāyanas’ and (on their copper issue) ‘Victory of the Yaudheyas’, which point to their having won independence by the sword. With them, from its position, must have gone Mathurā itself, and its vassal kings became independent monarchs; it is tempting to see in the change of style on their coins from the king’s name alone to that name with the addition of the title rājan³ their declaration of independence. Of the Trigartas nothing seems known, but the Audumbaras and Kunindas may not have been lost till somewhat later. The coinage of the former, to whom their trade was of importance, starts somewhere in the first century B.C.; as they occasionally imitate the types of Demetrius and Apollodotus I, one wonders whether their king Mahādeva’s assumption of the title ‘King of kings’ on his coins,¹ which is said to be very early for an Indian king,² was copied from Eucratides. Later in the first century a ruler of the Kunindas, Amogabhūti, issued a silver coinage ‘which would compete in the market with the later Indo-Greek silver’;³ both these peoples had been somewhat affected by the Greeks.

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² See the Introduction to and catalogue in *BMC India* under the respective names.

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³ *Ib.* p. cx.

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¹ *BMC India* p. 123.

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² *Ib.* p. lxxxv.

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³ *Ib.* p. ciii.

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About 60 B.C., probably before Maues died, the Sacas conquered Mathurā, and the Indian kings are followed by Saca satraps, the best known being Hagāmasha and Hagāna;⁴ they in turn were followed by a Saca Great Satrap, Rājuvula (once read Rañjubula) of the coins,⁵ Rājuvula or Rājula of the inscriptions,⁶ who imitated the money of the two Stratos; the change in style may have some connection with Azes’ conquest of the eastern Greek kingdom (p. 349). The dates mean that the Sacas reached Mathurā quite independently of their advance up the Indus, perhaps from Malva across Rajputana by Ajmer. Attention has already been called to their numbers; their invasion differed from that of the Greeks in being a regular conquest, and their strength is shown by the manner in which some of the states they founded lasted far into the Christian Era.⁷ There is nothing to show that when the Sacas reached Mathurā c. 60 B.C. the eastern Greeks had lost Sāgala; they still ruled everything between the Jhelum and the Ravi.

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⁴ *CHI* p. 527; Whitehead, *NNM* p. 45; *BMC India* pp. cxi, cxvi, 183-4, where Allan dates the first Saca satrap of Mathurā to about 60 B.C.; this cannot be far out.

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⁵ Coins in *BMC*; see p. xxxix, and *CHI* pp. 527, 575; Whitehead, *NNM* pp. 45-6; *BMC India* pp. 85-9. In 1853 ninety-six coins of Strato were found together with Rājuvula’s money in Mathurā, Noe *op. cit.* p. 126.

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⁶ Rājula on the Mathurā Lion Capital, *CII* no. xv. Rājuvula, *ib.* p. xxxiii, and see *BMC India* p. cxiii, where Allan now reads Rājuvula on the coins also.

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⁷ Grousset pp. 60-1: they held Seistan till the reign of Bahram II, A.D. 276-93, and Kathiawar and Gujerat till the fifth century.

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The Greek kings of the eastern group cannot be arranged in order, but one or more must have bridged the gap between Strato I and the last pair of eastern kings, Hippostratus and Nicias, about whom a certain amount of information can be recovered. Hippostratus’ coins⁸ show both the round and the square omicron, and the bearing of this upon his date must be considered. The square omicron had appeared sporadically at Athens from the third century B.C.,¹ and there is an isolated occurrence of it at Susa in an inscription of 98 B.C.;² but its regular appearance upon the Parthian coinage begins at some period in the reign of Orodes II,³ who reigned from 55 to 38/7 B.C., and this decided Professor Rapson to date its appearance in India to c. 40 B.C.,⁴ a little later than the probable time of its appearance in Parthia, though he has entered a caveat that as regards the dating of the square letter-forms generally in India questions of different local usages may come in.⁵ I think it may be taken that, if a king has a reasonably abundant coinage and that coinage regularly shows both forms of omicron (no king’s coinage I think shows the square form alone), part of his reign anyhow should be later than c. 40 B.C.; but perhaps one can get a little closer than this. If I am right about the Chinese evidence (pp. 337 sqq.)—and no alternative explanation is apparent—Hermaeus was reigning somewhat before 48 B.C. and somewhat after 32 B.C. His reign then may be called c. 50–30 B.C., and his coinage shows a mixture of both forms of omicron, which helps to date Hippostratus; for as Hippostratus’ coins show the same mixture he must roughly be contemporary. But on a coin of Spalyris, who was dead before Hermaeus’ accession (pp. 341 sq.), there is the square omicron,⁶ though he generally uses the round one;⁷ the square omicron, therefore, is no bar to Hippostratus having begun to reign some years earlier than 50 B.C.,⁸ should other indications point to that; the abundance of his tetradrachms suggests a reign of substantial length.

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⁸ *BMC* pp. 59 sq.; Whitehead, *NC* p. 338; Lahore Cat. p. 75.

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¹ Cumont, Fouilles pp. 352 sq.

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² SEG VII, 6.

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³ BMC Parthia pp. 73 sqq. Its regular occurrence at Susa begins with SEG VII, 12, in the reign of Orodes’ successor Phraates IV.

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⁴ CHI p. 572.

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⁵ JRAS 1905 p. 811.

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⁶ BMC p. 100.

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⁷ Ib. pp. 98, 173.

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⁸ In fact another letter-form, the square omega, appeared in India before it appeared in (western) Parthia, p. 327 n. 7.

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The naval symbolism on the coins of Hippostratus and Nicias, a new phenomenon among the Greeks of India, not only renders it impossible to separate them, but connects them both with one of the Punjab rivers. On some of Hippostratus’ coin-series, both silver and square bronze, there occurs the Fortune of a city—the sole appearance of this type on the coins of any of the eastern group of kings—and the city can only be Bucephala, the one polis known so far to the east; his ‘city’ coins must therefore have been minted there—doubtless it was his capital—and as one series of his ‘city’ coins shows as type Triton holding a dolphin and rudder,¹ the river with which he is connected can only be the Jhelum. All the ‘city’ coins are distinguished by a peculiar monogram, that of his mint-master in Bucephala, found again frequently on the money of his conqueror Azes but nowhere else, and as it does not occur on his other coins he had at least two mints; the other was presumably Sāgala. Most of his coins are said to come from Punch or Hazāra, and a hoard of his tetradrachms has been found in Punch.² It must be remembered that that part of his kingdom alone which lay between the Jhelum and the Chenab, with its extension into the hills, was considerably larger than that of Alexander’s powerful opponent Porus; and his realm may have been strengthened by Greek refugees from the lost eastern provinces.

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¹ *BMC* p. 60 nos. 11–13.

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² Whitehead, *NC* pp. 336, 338.

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Nicias can only have been a minor king, since, except for his unique drachm, he only strikes square bronze coins;³ some have the round omicron, some the square form and in addition the square sigma⁴ and an intermediate form of omega,⁵ which do not appear on any other Indo-Greek coins. The square forms of these three letters together with a square phi appear regularly on the coins of Gondophares, whose rule began in A.D. 19⁶ and whose huge realm had its capital at Taxila; his coinage is the most extreme example in India of the square lettering,⁷ which died out as Greek ceased to be a living tongue in India and is entirely absent from the more conventional forms on the Kushan coinage after Kadphises I. But, in spite of the square letters, one cannot put Nicias later than Hippostratus, because of the round omicron; and the two are closely associated both by their naval symbolism, which points to similar circumstances, and by their common use of the type of Antimachus II, ‘King on prancing horse’; they should therefore be his descendants. Hippostratus’ coinage shows that he was the more important; they may have been father and son, with Nicias his father’s sub-king or associate. If it was known that Alexander’s Nicaea still existed—there is no evidence¹—one would emphasise the possibility that Nicias was ‘king Nicaea’ (with the name adapted to the common Greek form) and ruled Bucephala’s bridge-head on the Saca bank of the Jhelum, an outpost of Hippostratus’ kingdom, and also the possibility that the square letters other than the omicron were especially favoured in the country between the Indus and the Jhelum which was dominated by Taxila. In any case, Nicias’ coins are usually found in the Jhelum district and his kingdom was somewhere on that river; his coins are of poor style, which may point to an improvised mint. There is a third king, Theophilus (p. 164), whose extremely rare coins show a square theta² and who might therefore belong to the same group; he uses Demetrius’ type of Heracles standing³ and was therefore probably a Euthydemid, but it is impossible to say where he ruled.

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³ Coins, *BMC* pp. 58, 171; Whitehead, *NC* p. 334.

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⁴ This form first appears in Parthia with Mithridates III (*BMC Parthia* pp. 61 sqq.) who reigned 56–55 B.C., and then regularly from the latter part of the reign of Orodes II (*ib.* pp. 73 sqq.). This suits my dating of Nicias well enough.

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⁵ *BMC* p. xlvi n.

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⁶ *CHI* p. 576; Herzfeld, *Sakastan* pp. 91, 96, 101.

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⁷ As his reign is A.D. 19–45 plus, and as the square omega first appears in Parthia under Vardanes, A.D. 41–5 (*BMC Parthia* p. 153), he introduced this form; that is, some district in India, probably Taxila, was experimenting for itself after Greek rule had ended. But the intermediate omega of Nicias, unknown in Parthia, shows that experiments had begun somewhere *before* Greek rule ended. The square forms of phi, theta, and rho appear at Susa earlier than Gondophares, with a square omicron but with a round omega: *SEG* VII, 12, 13.

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¹ It has been tentatively suggested that the type Nike on various Greek, Saca and Pahlava coins in India may refer to Nicaea (*CHI* pp. 551, 588, 592); but I think myself that Nike is too common a type everywhere to have a local meaning. Ptolemy does not mention Nicaea; but he is not professing to give a complete list of towns west of the Jhelum as he does east of it.

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² Not used by Gondophares or in Parthia; but it had occurred at Athens, Cumont *loc. cit.*, and is found at Susa, *SEG* VII, 12 (between 36 B.C. and A.D. 1) and 13 (A.D. 1). It seems to show that the Greeks in India were in communication with Susa up to the end.

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³ *BMC* p. 167 no. 1.

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The reason for one’s interest in the obscure Nicias is a square bronze coin of his which shows on the obverse a head of Poseidon with his trident and on the reverse a dolphin twined round an anchor,⁴ recalling the Triton holding a dolphin and rudder of Hippostratus. That this coin celebrates a naval victory seems certain enough: Poseidon had not appeared on any Greek coin in the Farther East since the first Antimachus had used the type to celebrate his naval victory on the Oxus (pp. 90 *sq.*). It might be suggested that, if Nicias was a descendant of Antimachus I through Antimachus II, he was merely copying his type; but even if he had it to copy, which would be very doubtful, it is far too remote in both time and place, and moreover the two types are very different.⁵ Nicias’ Poseidon and trident must have its usual meaning on Greek coins: he had defeated a Saca fleet on the Jhelum. In a sense he is imitating Maues' coin, but his Poseidon tramples on no river-god; to the invading Sacas the rivers were hostile barriers, but to the Greeks on the defensive the Jhelum played its traditional rôle of friend and would-be-helper to the defence.¹

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⁴ Whitehead, *NC* p. 334 no. 53, Pl. XVI, 14.

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⁵ Nicias has ‘head of Poseidon’ only, Antimachus I a full-length figure.

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¹ Porus against Alexander, which reappears later in strange circumstances. Nonnus, who knew little or nothing of India but the Alexander-story, makes the Hydaspes (Jhelum) and not the Indus the principal river in his India; it is the father of the Indian leader Deriades and itself fights against Dionysus.

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If this requires confirmation it can be found in the dolphin twined round an anchor. This type had never before been used in the East, but it was known in the West, in Alexandrian or rather perhaps Phoenician art; it occurs on a mosaic in the House of the Trident at Delos, done by a Phoenician artist not later than the end of the second century B.C., and subsequently at Pompeii, and it has been interpreted to mean ‘prosperous voyage’.² At Delos it seems to be connected with the Phoenician merchants established there, and merchants must have brought it to Bucephala; it need not have come from Phoenicia direct, for there were ‘Syrians’ settled in Merv (p. 15) and Susa (p. 29) and a large body at Seleuceia (p. 18); Phoenician merchants had followed Alexander to India, Phoenicians formed a settlement called Tyre in that country,³ and it was Phoenicians who had passed this symbol across Asia. On Nicias’ coin the symbol meant that his victorious fleet had had a ‘prosperous voyage’. The Triton with dolphin of Hippostratus must refer to the same victory; doubtless Nicias had been actually in command of the joint fleet, but the ultimate importance of the victory is shown principally by the fact that Hippostratus, on one of his silver issues, assumes the title ‘Great King’,⁴ which no Greek in the Farther East had done on his coinage before him⁵ except Eucratides. But as the dolphin twined round an anchor became Nicias’ usual reverse type on his bronze coins,⁶ associated with his head on the obverse, the victory must have been won early in his reign, and might be anywhere from about 60 to 50 B.C. (pp. 326, 336).

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² Ch. Picard, *Syria* XIV, 1933, pp. 318-20.

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³ Steph. *s.v.* Τύπος; see p. 10.

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⁴ BMC p. 59 nos. 3 sqq.; Lahore Cat. p. 75 nos. 610-15.

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⁵ Antialcidas is called ‘the great king’ in the Besnagar inscription, but not on his coins.

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⁶ BMC p. 58 no. 2.

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Unquestionably the vanquished were the Sacas. Maues had struck a coin with well-known types of both Eucratides and Demetrius,¹ showing that he claimed to be the successor of both kings; but he never used Menander’s characteristic Athena Alkis, and therefore never ruled any part of Menander’s home kingdom east of the Jhelum. Whether it was his fleet which was defeated, or whether he was already dead, cannot be said; it might suit best to suppose that his fleet was defeated in an attempt to open a way up the Jhelum to Bucephala as it had opened a way up the Indus to Taxila, and that he died soon after. For the victory, as will be seen, was certainly followed, though not necessarily at once, by a period of peace, or rather perhaps cessation of hostilities, between Greek and Saca; and as this cannot have been due to one reverse—the Sacas were too strong for that—it may imply Maues’ death. It will be suggested later that his death was in 58 B.C.

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¹ *BMC* p. 70 no. 14, Cunningham *NC* 1890 p. 136 no. 7; obv., Eucratides’ ‘Kapisi’ type, with forepart of elephant before Zeus; rev., Demetrius’ type of Heracles standing and crowning himself.

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The notable thing about Hippostratus’ reign is the appearance of his tetradrachms in considerable abundance.² Tetradrachms in India are supposed to have been issued for the use of the Greek rather than the Indian community;³ and this must be right, for the Kushans, with masses of Indian subjects, got on quite well without any silver coinage at all except such punch-marked and Greek pieces as might still be in circulation. After Menander, tetradrachms of the kings west of the Jhelum are not common,⁴ and of the kings east of the Jhelum none are known at all⁵ except a few of Agathocleia and of Strato I;⁶ then at the very end of Greek rule come a large number of those of Hippostratus and a still larger number of those of his contemporary Hermaeus in the Paropamisadae. As Greeks in India were certainly not increasing—they may have been considerably diminished by the Saca war, and had certainly lost a great deal of territory—the phenomenon can only mean an increased trade with the western world, and that in turn must mean that both kings for a time enjoyed an interval of peace, which must primarily have been due to Maues’ death. We have seen how the flourishing period of Greek rule in India coincided exactly with a great outburst of prosperity in Seleuceia on the Tigris (p. 261); one is inclined to ask whether a new increase in the Indian trade may have been one cause of the increase of coining in Parthia about this time—of drachms after Phraates III had re-unified the empire (66 B.C.) and of tetradrachms from the middle of the reign of Orodes II (57–38/7 B.C.).¹ The matter is too obscure to be considered here. But it is of interest that these last fractions of the Greek empire in India should not only have been still trading with the West but should have been able to increase that trade, and that a new symbol should have reached India from the Phoenician world, and a new letter-form from Susa (p. 328 n. 2). It is known that Hermaeus and Hippostratus were in touch (p. 337); and though no doubt they could have maintained communication through the hills northward of the Saca kingdom, still the Sacas held the great road and for effective trade purposes Hippostratus could only reach Hermaeus and the West across Saca territory, which again shows that there must have been an interval of peace (I shall come back to this): Hippostratus would not have coined tetradrachms in quantities had he not been in communication with the West through the Alexandria-Kapisa gateway, and it is worth notice that in a collection of coins recently formed in the Paropamisadae he and Nicias are the only kings east of the Jhelum after Menander who are represented,² save for a solitary coin of Strato.

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Linked texts (6)

Vāyupurāṇa — Vyāsa, Sanskrit
Aṣṭādhyāyī — Pāṇini, Sanskrit
Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum
Purāṇa — Sanskrit
Sagala
Vṛddhagārgīyajyotiṣa — Garga, Sanskrit