The Greeks in Bactria and India c10.s7.127

c10.s7.127

Here at last the Yavanas of the cave inscriptions, whom we have already met (pp. 254 *sqq.*), can be brought in—wealthy Indian merchants⁴ who were Greek citizens and who appear in the country behind Bombay. One, Indragnidatta the Yonaka, is known to have been a citizen of Demetrias-Patala, and all must have been citizens either of Demetrias or of Theophila (whatever its Indian name was), as no other Greek *poleis* in the south are known. The chaitya halls at Nasik and Karli are first-century B.C., when Demetrias and Surastrene were under Saca rule, and on archaeological grounds are said more probably to belong to the later than to the earlier half of the century;¹ while Indragnidatta’s own inscription,² on internal evidence, can be dated to about 50–30 B.C. Indragnidatta had come to Demetrias from the north; and there can be little doubt that these merchants’ inscriptions belong to the period of the cessation of hostilities between Greeks and Sacas already described (pp. 343 sq.), that is, roughly between c. 50 and c. 30 B.C., the time which saw a revival of Greek trade in the north under Hermaeus and Hippostratus (see generally Chap. VIII). The main route from southern India northward came to Ujjain, where it met the road from Barygaza going eastward; it then continued northward from Ujjain by the way Apollodotus had once taken, passing through his foundation Theophila and so to Demetrias. This was the road taken by the produce of southern India going northward; and the most important product of the South was pepper, of which one district in Malabar had something approaching a monopoly.³ When therefore a genuine export trade started, pepper had to make a laborious land journey northward to Demetrias; and even if it went to the sea at Barygaza (not of course through Ujjain, but by some road branching off from the southward) all ships going westward had to call at Demetrias, as Pliny shows; that city was the first centre of export.