The Greeks in Bactria and India c10.s7.35

c10.s7.35

Another thing was the Greek calendar. It has already been mentioned (p. 64) how that great invention the Seleucid Era, model for the Parthian and for the Roman provincial Eras, swept Asia west of India; and it is certain that the half-Seleucid Euthydemids used it in Bactria, for they could not possibly have used anything else, in view of the trouble they took to proclaim that they were Seleucids; as to the house of Eucratides, Plato’s dated coin is definite proof (p. 209). Demetrius of necessity took the Seleucid calendar (in its Macedonian, not its Babylonian or semi-Babylonian, form)¹ to India with him, and there it gave birth to many other Eras;² kings or dynasties of alien blood might desire to set up Eras of their own, but they were all copies; the *idea* of reckoning time from a date fixed once for all came to India with the Greeks. Sacas and Kushans copied so closely that nothing differed but the initial year, and their calendars have been called Indo-Macedonian;³ they kept the same subdivisions, the Macedonian months, and the Macedonian names of these months in place of the Indian names often appear in the datings of Kharoshthi inscriptions of the Saca and Kushan periods.⁴ Indeed, though Brahmi inscriptions normally use the Indian month-names, a Sanscrit inscription recording a donation is now known, written in Brahmi and found as far afield as Mathurā, which is dated in the reign of the Kushan Huvishka in the 28th year of the Era of Kanishka on the first day of the Macedonian month Gorpiaios.⁵ It has however been suggested that the donor must have come to Mathurā from the North-West.⁶