The Greeks in Bactria and India c10.s7.64

c10.s7.64

Of the spread of trade eastward in the Greek period we do not get too many indications. With the nomad conquest of Bactria and the loss of Bactra, whose equipment of markets was duly recorded by Chang-k'ien,² the Greeks lost control of the half-way house where met the land routes from India and China and the trade was gathered up, though it is evident from the coinages of Hippostratus and Hermaeus that the Yueh-chi no more interfered with trade with the West than did the Parthians at this time. But the loss of Bactria meant that when in 106 B.C.³ the Chinese sent their first caravan through from China to Parthia *via* Bactra, the Greeks, now confined to India, had no part in this through trade or anything to do with the import of Chinese silk which grew up along what was to be known as the Silk Route. The most definite things which can be traced to the time when Greeks still held Bactria are the import of nickel from China at the end of the reign of Euthydemus (p. 87), an Alexandrian glass vase with a head of Athena of the second century B.C. found in Honan,⁴ and Bactrian and Syrian cloth, perhaps as early as the late second century, found by the Koslov expedition at Urga in Mongolia,⁵ which had travelled along the route to Mongolia of which something has already been said (p. 109); whether it was at this time or later that the Greek word diadem reached Mongolian⁶ through Sogdian I do not know, nor do I know the date of the famous white bronze mirror of the Han period with Graeco-Bactrian designs.⁷ The failure of the people of Ferghana to get into touch with China and their anxiety to do so, recorded by Chang-k’ien in 128 B.C. (p. 87), may show that the difficulties had been very considerable till China opened up the way; and the things which China received from the Graeco-Iranian world—the pomegranate and other ‘Chang-k’ien’ plants (p. 311), the heavy equipment of the cataphract,¹ the traces of Greek influence on Han art²—are probably all later than 106 B.C., as were her own exports of silk, furs,³ and the high-class iron which came to Parthia through Merv;⁴ and if China got the vine (p. 311) and the great war-horse (p. 309) earlier, it was still not till after the fall of the Greek kingdom of Bactria; the Greeks lost Bactria too soon for the Chinese trade. Doubtless in the first century B.C. the Greeks in India imported for themselves silk and other articles from China, for Chinese jade⁵ and a Japanese scallop-shell⁶ (the earliest known indication that Japan existed) were found at Taxila, and later we hear of a regular trade route from Bactra to Barygaza;⁷ but what the ancient world really found lucrative was transit trade,⁸ and it cannot be supposed that silk, instead of going to Seleuceia, would travel all the way to Barygaza to be shipped to the West till direct voyages to Egypt became usual, and by that time the Greeks had lost Barygaza and their Indian ports.