The Greeks in Bactria and India c12.62

c12.62

The fourth name, Sabbadinna, is unexplained, for one cannot take seriously suggestions like Sarapodotos or Pasidotos, the latter of which is not even Greek;⁴ it has indeed been said that the name cannot be explained from Greek, Sanscrit, or Pali.⁵ The Chinese translator gives no help, for it is supposed that he took the name literally as meaning ‘endowed with everything’ or something of the sort, and translated it by K’ien, ‘the avaricious’.⁶ The word Sabba- occurs in various Indian names, like Sabbamitra,⁷ or Sabbakami, the Pali name of Ananda’s disciple Sarvakama,⁸ or the king Sambos-Sabbas of the Alexander story;⁹ but I must suppose that Sabbadinna, which would presumably be Sarvadatta in Sanscrit,¹⁰ makes no sense in either language, or this explanation would have been given long ago. Ptolemy (VI, II, 6) gives an otherwise unknown tribe, Σαβάδιοι, in Bactria; but a connection with this would involve treating -dinna as a mere ‘adjustment’, to give the name an Indian look. More hopeful is the group of names which centre on Sabazios (Thracian Sabadios) and are allied, through the equation Sabazios-Sabaoth, to Jewish Sabbath-names;¹ for though a comparison with the Macedonian (? Thracian) name Sabataras² (probably connected with Sabadios) or with the common Jewish name Sabbataios-Sambathaios would involve the same difficulty about -dinna, a better suggestion can be offered which would make -dinna an integral part of the name. If Gressmann be right,³ there was in Anatolia a goddess Sambethe-Sabba (the traditional name of the Chaldaean Sybil, Berossus’ daughter) corresponding to the god Sabbatistes, worshipped by the well-known Sabbatistai of Cilicia;⁴ and a name Sabbadotos, ‘the gift of (the goddess) Sabba’,⁵ would be a normal Greek formation on the lines of Theodotos, Diodotos, Apollodotos, and would in Pali be Sabbadinna.⁶ This would not of course make the man a Jew, any more than the Sabbatistai were Jews; he would be a more or less hellenised Anatolian. Menander, it seems, had some Anatolian troops (p. 250); and there would be no objection to an Anatolian being on his Council, seeing that under Antiochus III an Anatolian, the Carian Hermeias, was vizier. If this be well founded, Sabbadotos must have been the man’s real name, for no Indian would have known of the goddess Sabba or been able to invent the name; he (and naturally the other three also) would therefore be historical. However that may be, since it has been seen that the Greek allusions in Part I of the Milinda must have been written soon after Menander’s death, that work is at any rate good evidence that his Council was a mixture of nationalities, precisely as one would expect.⁷