[Pramāṇa](https://indike.org/pramana/) › [Studies](https://indike.org/pramana/ins) › [General history and culture](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.general) › [The Greeks in Bactria and India](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.general.tarn-1938) › c10.s6.246 # The Greeks in Bactria and India c10.s6.246 The Greeks in Bactria and India c10.s6.246 - **Language:** English ### [c10.s6.246](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.general.tarn-1938.c10.s6.246) Hermaeus' kingdom may or may not have lasted a year or two longer. The deterioration of his later coins with the square omicron has been said to witness to the difficulties which surrounded him;⁷ if so, it might mean that the conquest of his kingdom was a slow process and that his best engravers, like the great Bactrian artists, fell fighting. Somewhere between 48 and 33 B.C. China under Yuan-ti had ceased to take any interest in the Paropamisadae, which was relegated to the list of ‘unregistered and impracticable’ lands; Wen-chung had no successor, and Hermaeus paid for his virtual repudiation of China’s suzerainty with the loss of her support (he might have lost it in any case), which may also have entailed the loss of the support of her Kushan allies. After a new emperor, Ching-ti, had in 32 come to the throne, Hermaeus sent envoys to him, officially to ask for pardon, but really in a desperate effort to obtain China’s help, which attests his altered circumstances; Ching-ti’s advisers however were hostile to the idea of interfering in a land which Chinese troops could not effectively reach across the mountains, and it is the long memorandum on this subject presented by Tu-k’in to the Emperor which shows that in reality Hermaeus had sent to ask for help.¹ Ching-ti on a trivial pretext (p. 340) refused to receive the envoys, and Hermaeus was left to his fate; after all, his last dealing with China had consisted in putting to death the escort of a Chinese envoy. Spalirises conquered the Paropamisadae² and the ‘Zeus enthroned’ of Alexandria-Kapisa appears on his coins;³ the Zeus is sitting full face, and it has been noticed for a century that his ‘Zeus enthroned’ is a copy of that of Hermaeus;⁴ also the sign \*p\* for \*sh\*, which (as P) had appeared on Miaos’ coins presumably minted in, or copying patterns made for him in, Kapisa (App. 17), now sometimes appears on those of Spalirises (p. 509). But he cannot long have survived his conquest—his coins, though not rare, are said not to be very numerous—for the monogram of one of Hermaeus’ moneyers appears on coins of Azes.⁵ Hermaeus’ death cannot be put much later than 30 B.C., indeed it cannot really be said whether he or Hippostratus fell first; but however that may be, with the deaths of these two kings almost everything in Asia between the Euphrates and the Jumna which Greeks had once ruled had now passed into the hands of peoples from the northern steppes. - [Previous: c10.s6.245](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.general.tarn-1938.c10.s6.245) - [Next: c10.s6.247](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.general.tarn-1938.c10.s6.247) - [Up: c10.s6](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.general.tarn-1938.c10.s6) --- Source: [https://indike.org/pramana/ins.general.tarn-1938.c10.s6.246](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.general.tarn-1938.c10.s6.246) · Pramāṇa