The Greeks in Bactria and India c14.31

c14.31

The conclusion for that period then is that we have found two difficulties, perhaps exceptions, in Hyrcania and one lapse in Ptolemy. Looking at the great number of -ηνῃ and -ιανῃ names known, this is little enough in the literature of a people who were often careless about, and perhaps even disliked, the consistent use of technical terms in the modern fashion, and, in the particular case of India, is little to set against the fact that Ptolemy, but for his one lapse, is always careful in his usage. Moreover the eparchy- or province-names in the Paropamisadae seem certain (pp. 96 sq.); and though prior to the second century B.C. that country had belonged rather to the Iranian than to the Indian system, it could not fail, from its position on the Indian side of the Hindu Kush, to be something more than a half-way house to India. It seems then that such exceptions as I have succeeded in finding do not provide any alternative to the view that the nine province-names collected in India—seven from Ptolemy and one each from Pliny and Arrian—and discussed in Chapter VI must have the same connection with the Seleucid terminology as is exhibited in the nomenclature of all the other Seleucid Succession states, that is, that they were provinces of the Greek kingdom in India.