The Greeks in Bactria and India c10.s7.229

c10.s7.229

I doubt if mixed marriages played as much part in this result as might be supposed, at any rate so long as Greek rule lasted; the general question has already been considered for the Middle East, and there it was found impossible to envisage mixed marriages on any considerable scale till after the Christian Era (pp. 35 *sqq.*). Naturally there would be *some* mixed marriages in India in the first century B.C., for Greeks had not the faintest feeling about what among English-speaking peoples to-day is called the ‘colour-bar’; but they had a good deal of pride in their Greekhood, and must have attempted, at any rate for a time, to keep themselves as Greek as possible (p. 38), whatever the attractions of Indian *religions*. There are said to be statements in Buddhist literature that among the Yavanas, if a man met with a sudden death, he might not be buried till the king was told,⁴ obviously to give the opportunity for an enquiry; it seems to point to some care on the part of the kings to keep up Greek numbers—the life of a Yavana was not a thing to be wasted. I think there was another factor, apart from mixed marriages, to which a good deal of weight must be given. British children are not brought up in India to-day, not so much because they cannot be reared (though in some places they may grow up sickly) as because there is a tendency that at their impressionable period some of their native characteristics may weaken and they may acquire a mentality somewhat nearer akin to that of the Indian, and not the highest type of Indian; continue the process among the Greeks for several generations—it would work like compound interest—and the resulting Indianisation would be obvious. The Greeks in India may have ultimately vanished, not because they became Eurasians, but because they became Indians.