The Greeks in Bactria and India c33.5

c33.5

What form was used by the other Greek historian, ‘Trogus’ source’, c. 85 B.C., can only be deduced, but certainly it was not Τόχαροι. The MSS of Trogus Prol. XLII give Thocarorum, Thodarorum, Thoclarorum, Toclarorum,³ to which the best MSS add, in Justin XLII, 2, 2, the form Thogariis. It is possible therefore, but by no means certain, that this Greek historian’s form had th and was Thocaroi or Thogaroi; that is, that the aspirate came in the first syllable, not the second. This position of the aspirate is found later in the much-quoted forms Θαγοῦροι (Thagouroi) and Θογάρα (Thogara) in Ptolemy (p. 285 n. 6) for a people and town in Kan-su on the way to Sera Metropolis, forms derived from agents of Maes Titianus and therefore second century A.D.; and again in the Thibetan forms⁴ Tho-kar, Tho-gar, Thod-khar, Phod-kar, whose date I do not know, for a people in Kan-su. The form Phod-kar might guarantee Pliny’s Focari⁵ (in Chinese Turkestan), usually taken to be a corruption of Thocari; this passage in Pliny is most probably Hellenistic, and his form, and not the MSS of Trogus, is the likeliest evidence for the aspirated first syllable being Hellenistic.¹ The forms Thagouroi—Thogara show the same metathesis of the vowels as has already been seen in Tocharoi—Tachoroi.