The Greeks in Bactria and India c10.s7.27

c10.s7.27

We can now return to the period of Greek rule and gather up what indications remain of what the Greeks in India did. The provincial organisation of the Greek empire in India at its fullest extent has already been examined (Chap. VI), and Indian citizens of one Greek *polis* at least, Demetrias in Sind, have been traced at a date which cannot be much later than 50 B.C. (p. 257 n. 3). The Kharoshthi letters on some of the Greek coins,¹ which from their relation to the Greek monograms are clearly the initials of an Indian moneyer, enable us to confirm these Indian citizens. These letters are for some time confined to the group of kings who ruled east of the Jhelum, the kings of the houses of Euthydemus and Menander, which for all purposes of policy were identical in fact as, except for Menander himself, they were in blood; Kharoshthi letters are common on the coins of Strato I, Zoilus II Soter, and Apollodotus II, and occur on those of Apollophanes and Dionysius, but are never found on coins of Menander and his contemporaries, *e.g.* Antimachus II, or for a little while after his death (Agathocleia and Zoilus I Dikaios); we may say roughly that they begin with the last quarter or last third of the second century B.C. They never occur on coins of any king known to be of the house of Eucratides, or on the coins of Lysias, who, though a Euthydemid, coined in Antialcidas’ mints (p. 315). Except on the late base silver of Strato I they are, prior to Hippostratus, confined to the copper currencies, and the usual rule is that they never appear alone but always in association with a Greek monogram. In the Seleucid mint at Antioch it was the rule for two moneyers to sign the coins, one being a permanent mint-master and the other a changing city magistrate.² I do not know whether an examination of every coin with a Kharoshthi initial on it (which I cannot make) would show if these Indians were ever magistrates; but there is one simple case in which the Kharoshthi letter certainly represents a permanent official of the mint, and that is the ‘city’ coins of Hippostratus, minted in Bucephala (p. 245), a Greek *polis*. All his ‘city’ type coins, both bronze and silver, bear the same very distinctive Greek monogram and the same Kharoshthi letter; these were his two mint-masters at Bucephala. It is known from Plutarch that Perseus had two mint-masters at Pella (p. 437), and I have traced the two in Bactra in the great period (App. 1); what is not known is whether, when there were two, they were colleagues with equal authority, or whether one was subordinate; this in Hippostratus’ mint would be the Indian. The latter is more probable, for we see the Indian moneyer at first signing copper money only before being at the end promoted to signing the silver also. But in one mint we find an Indian mint-master already in control by about the beginning of the first century B.C.: on some late silver of Strato, called semi-barbarous, and on some bronze of Strato, Zoilus II, and Apollodotus II, there is no Greek monogram at all but only two Kharoshthi letters, showing that the mint in question had two Indian mint-masters; the mint in question was probably Sāgala, which, unlike Bucephala, was not a Greek *polis*. The fact that Kharoshthi letters are comparatively rare on coins of Maues¹ is one more sign of his early date, for throughout the Saca and Parthian (Pahlava) coinages from Azes to Pacores such letters are common. Very rarely, and very late, one Kharoshthi letter appears alone; this occurs only on some ‘uncertain’ bronze coins, which I have thought might belong to kinglets driven into the hills (p. 323 n. 1), and on the second series of the ‘Hermaeus’ coins of Kujula Kadphises (App. 17); he was an invader issuing proclamations, and had to get his propaganda money struck as best he could.