The Greeks in Bactria and India c10.s7.31

c10.s7.31

That these Indian mint-officials who signed the coinage were citizens where they occur in a Greek *polis* is certain, for they could not possibly have been anything else. And as it cannot be supposed that Sāgala under Strato or Bucephala under Hippostratus was incapable of supplying two Greeks to manage the mint, we must see in this admission of Indians to office a deliberate act of policy. The evidence of the coins takes us a good deal further back than that of the cave inscriptions, and no doubt by the last quarter of the second century the Euthydemids, whether from choice or by force of circumstances, were coming to rely more and more upon their Indian subjects; but the coins do not supply evidence for the time of Demetrius and Menander. Seeing, however, that the rule of these two kings was based on the idea of a sort of partnership, Indians must from the first have been admitted to citizenship; indeed it is not apparent on what other lines a place like Demetrias in Sind could ever have been a *polis*, as it certainly was from its dynastic name. The kings of Eucratides’ line, like Eucratides himself, may have held different views; we do not know. But the only king west of the Jhelum on whose coins Kharoshthi letters occur, and the only king therefore to admit Indians to office, was Hermaeus, and it is quite uncertain if he did belong to the house of Eucratides; in any case he may have turned to his Indian subjects, as at the end he turned to China, in an attempt to stave off the inevitable.