The Greeks in Bactria and India c10.s7.209

c10.s7.209

Of the inscriptions dated in the period of Greek rule, that of Heliodorus on the Besnagar column is probably the earliest; it is not likely to be later than 100 B.C. and may even be a little earlier (pp. 313 *sq.*). He was the Greek ambassador of a Greek king, but he does not use Greek for his inscription; he proclaims himself the adherent of an Indian creed, quotes an Indian epic, and sets up his record in Brahmi. It might be argued that there were no Greeks in Vidisa to read it, or that he wished to pay a compliment to the state to which he was accredited, though even so a bilingual inscription would have been indicated. But such considerations do not in any case apply to the very important Kharoshthi inscription, on a vase from Swat, of the Greek meridarch Theodorus.¹ Dr Konow put this inscription not *later* than the middle of the first century B.C.; but his whole scheme of historical dating in the Corpus, some of which he has now abandoned (p. 495), is later than the one worked out in this book, and this inscription is probably early in the century, and might well be even as early as that of Heliodorus. Theodorus was a Buddhist, and his dedication deals with a matter which by his time must have been of interest, or even of importance, to many more Greeks than himself, the establishment of (that is, the provision of a stupa to contain) some relics of Buddha; but his dedication is in Kharoshthi alone, not in both languages, and he therefore assumed that every Greek in Gandhara who was interested in Buddhism would know Prakrit and could read Kharoshthi.² One must suppose therefore that by the earlier part of the first century B.C. many Greeks in Gandhāra were becoming bilingual. The only other material inscription from the period of Greek rule, that of the Buddhist Theodorus Datiaputra of about 42 B.C., will be noticed later (p. 391).