The Greeks in Bactria and India c10.s7.2

c10.s7.2

THE end of Greek rule east of the Hindu Kush closely and rather dramatically coincided in date with two linked events in the Mediterranean world, the end of the last Hellenistic kingdom in the West, Egypt, and the establishment of the Roman empire of Augustus; as Augustus entered Alexandria on the first of August 30 B.C., it is conceivable that one or even both of the two remaining Greek kingdoms in India was actually the last Hellenistic kingdom to survive in independence. The reign of Augustus, though he had nothing much to do with the world east of the Euphrates, forms a convenient line of division both in India and in the Parthian empire, though not in the same way. For the Greeks of Parthia it marks, very roughly, the time when the period of achievement passes over into the period of decay, though in some places, as Seleuceia on the Tigris and Seleuceia on the Eulaeus (Susa), the latter process was perhaps not very marked till the second century A.D. In India, however, the period of achievement seems to have ended with Menander’s death, though that may be an illusion due to the fact that the succeeding half century is to us a blank; but in any case it will appear that the process of Indianisation of the Greeks cannot have well begun later than the early part of the first century B.C. The division which Augustus’ reign makes in India is a hard and fast division in the nature of our evidence. The knowledge, principally of Northern India, obtained by the Greek invaders is carried no further, but is replaced by information about the coasts and the ports derived from merchants of the Roman empire, men of every nationality, who now began to visit the harbours of Southern and of Farther India and even of China, giving Greek names to the little nameless islets where they found anchorage or water;¹ they learnt much about the coasts, but little or nothing about the interior of Northern India, with which they were not concerned. Much information about their doings survives in the Periplus, in Pliny, and in Ptolemy, and has been worked up in modern books; this has to be separated carefully from the fairly abundant Hellenistic information in Ptolemy and Pliny, and the Hellenistic historian must avoid drawing on it unless he has some definite reason, for it has nothing to do with the story of the Bactrian Greeks in India.