The Greeks in Bactria and India c10.s6.80

c10.s6.80

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.