The Greeks in Bactria and India c10.s7.231

c10.s7.231

Somewhere I have met with the whole-hearted statement that every Greek in India ended by becoming a Buddhist. Some no doubt did, though a good many must have ended by being killed in the Saca wars; but in fact at present there are only five Greeks whose religious predilections are known or can be deduced, and three of these were not Buddhists. Heliodorus the ambassador was a Bhāgavata, a worshipper of Vishnu-Krishna as the supreme deity; the legend on the seal of Timitra from Besnagar has been interpreted as referring to a Brahmanic sacrifice which he instituted;¹ and the Greek who read Jain literature and passed a piece of his information on to ‘Trogus’ source’ (p. 47) was, if not actually a Jain, at any rate interested in the doctrines of that sect. Theodorus Datiaputra, whose inscription, found in Swat, was most probably written *c.* 42 B.C.,² was certainly a Buddhist, as he dedicated a tank ‘in honour of all beings’, which is said to be a common Buddhist formula; and though one interpretation of Datiaputra (see p. 125 n. 2) would make him by descent not a Greek but a hellenised Bactrian, this is unlikely. Lastly, Theodorus the meridarch, who established some relics of Buddha ‘for the purpose of the security of many people’, was undoubtedly a Buddhist; for had he merely been carrying out an order of his Government he must have said so and not taken all the credit to himself. If, however, we meet Greeks of different creeds, it must at any rate speak to a good deal of general interest in the religions of India, while the Gandhāra school of art, of which I shall have to say something presently, is probably evidence that this very limited analysis, though the best one can make, does injustice to the position of Buddhism among the Greeks of the North-West; Buddhism to them must have been far the most important religion, if only for the political reasons already considered (Chap. iv), and the kings must always have depended a good deal on Buddhist support.