The Greeks in Bactria and India c33.10

c33.10

There is still a third type of spelling which is almost certainly Hellenistic, and might well be as early as the form Tocharoi. Pliny VI, 22 says that a people called Tagorae² crossed the Tanais-Don from east to west with other ‘Scyths’, while across the Tanais had been another people called Inapaei who had utterly perished, viritim deletos; but in VI, 50 he puts this latter people among another set of ‘Scyths’ altogether, across (north of) the Tanais-Jaxartes—ibi Napaei interisse dicuntur. He has therefore confused, as is common enough, the two rivers called Tanais in antiquity, and has also confused two groups of ‘Scyths’ connected with the two rivers; it is uncertain therefore, from Pliny alone, whether the Tagorae lived east of and crossed the Don or lived north of and crossed the Jaxartes. Fortunately Ptolemy settles it. He knew of a people Τακοραῖοι (Takoraioi) north of the Imaos,³ and gives them again as Ταπουραῖοι (Tapouraioi) living near the Τάπουρα ὄρη;⁴ Professor Herrmann has conjectured Ταγουραῖοι (Tagouraioi) for Ταπουραῖοι,⁵ but did not notice Takoraioi, which seems to make his conjecture certain. He identified the mountain chain near which the Tagouraioi lived (on the plains to the north of it) with the Alexandrovski range west of Lake Issyk Kul, and saw in the Tagouraioi that fraction of the Tochari-Yueh-chi who remained in the Sai-wang country when the Wu-sun and Hiung-nu drove out the main body of the Yueh-chi (p. 276) and who were ultimately absorbed by the Wu-sun, a brilliant explanation which may be gratefully accepted.