The Greeks in Bactria and India c9.s2.197

c9.s2.197

The Parthian kings imitated the Seleucid Era with one of their own, the Arsacid Era from which they themselves reckoned,² the initial year being 248–7 B.C., the date of the establishment of the kingdom of Tiridates; but even under Parthian rule both Babylonia and the Greek cities kept to the Seleucid dating, though in Babylonia regularly,³ and among Greeks sometimes, both calendars were used as double dating, the Arsacid in that case being called by Greeks ‘as the king reckons’ and the Seleucid ‘by the former reckoning’;⁴ no Babylonian or Greek document has yet been found which is certainly dated by the Arsacid Era alone,⁵ and there is no trace so far of the Arsacid calendar in India, which means that it was probably not used in the east Parthian kingdom of the Surens. The tenacity of the Seleucid calendar was remarkable: Doura used it when under Roman rule and Jews down to the eleventh century, and it is said to have still been in use among Syrian Christians at the beginning of the present century.⁶