The Greeks in Bactria and India c10.s6.73

c10.s6.73

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).