The Greeks in Bactria and India c30.14

c30.14

Stein then should be right that on the Kushan coinage ϸ represents San; but it was not I think a revival of San. The Aristoxenus passage should solve the problem of how the ‘obsolete’ San ever reached the Farther East; the answer is that it was not entirely obsolete.³ It was obsolete in classical literature; what kept it alive, ready to represent the sh sound in a foreign language if required, was not literature but music. Music formed part of the curriculum of the gymnasium, and gymnasia, as has been seen (p. 18), must have been universal in the Greek cities of the East; but there is more than that. Aristoxenus, says Athenaeus, spoke often (πολλάκις) about San. But Aristoxenus was famous; he was a learned Peripatetic and writer on the theory of music, and his works on the subject became classics in the Greek world; from him other writers on the subject took their start, and his writings must have been widely known. All the Hellenistic literature on music is lost, but there must once have been such a literature; one cannot suppose a blank between Aristoxenus in the fourth century B.C. and Aristides Quintilianus in the second century A.D., and indeed there is a reference to different schools of thought having existed.¹ There was plenty of interest in music, and not only among intellectuals—the Syracusan Women of Theocritus proves that—and that this interest extended to the Farther East is shown by Herodorus’ Ode to Apollo (p. 39) from Susa, where the unusual and intricate metre testifies to a corresponding study of music. All this must have kept alive the knowledge of San, because in music, unlike literature, the *sh* sound could not die; I understand that the tendency of some singers to sing *sh* (e.g. ‘Ish’ for ‘Ich’ in German) is as well-known in modern times as it was to Lasus and Aristoxenus. It is not necessary to say that a knowledge of San survived in *India* (though it may well have done so), for two art-motives travelled to India from Pergamum and the Phoenician sphere respectively shortly before the time of Miaos and Spalirises (pp. 394, 329), and there was perfectly good communication with the West in their day. And it seems certain that, if the *sh* sound could not die, the frequent comments on the subject of San by the most famous of Greek writers on music would not have been allowed to die either. And they did not die; some of them reached Athenaeus.