SYRIA, BACTRIA, AND PARTHIA
>
>
for him, and that the arrangement revealed by the partitions of Babylon
and Triparadisus represents what he had perforce to assent to.
>
>
for him, and that the arrangement revealed by the partitions of Babylon
and Triparadisus represents what he had perforce to assent to.
Cambridge History of India - v1
It is
recognised that the Indian name which Chares heard was Sūrya deva 'Sun-
god. Some ill-educated interpreter must have been misled by the
'
resemblance of sūrya 'sun' to surā-wine'.
The name 'Indians' was extended in its largest acceptance to cover
the barbarous tribes of mountain or jungle on the confines (f Brāhman
civilisation. In noting down what seemed to them odd points in the
physical characteristics or customs of these tribes the Greeks were moved
by an interest which is the germ of the modern science of anthropology.
Megasthenes noted that in the Hindu Kush the bodies of the dead were
eaten by their relations, as Herodotus had already stated of some aborigi-
nal people.
sources.
>
1 M. Crindle, Ancient India, p. 76. 2 See Rapson, Ancient Indiā, pp. 58. 61.
3 Strabo XV, C. 718. The god Indra seems to be identified with Zeus.
4 Athenaeus I, 27 D.
5 Megasth. Frag, 27=Strabo XV, C, 710.
>
## p. 380 (#418) ############################################
380
[CH.
INDIA IN GREEK AND LATIN LITERATURE
Even Megasthenes depended, of course, mainly upon his Indian
informants for knowledge of the peoples on the borders of the Indian
world, and he therefore repeated the fables as to the monstrous races
with one leg, with ears reaching to their feet and so on, which had long
been current in India and had already been communicated to the Greeks by
Scylax and Hecataeus and Ctesias. One would however like to know the
fact which lies behind his story that members of one tribe, living near the
sources of the Ganges, had been brought to the camp of Chandragupta-
'men of gentler manners - but without a mouth! They lived on th efumes
of roast meat and the smell of fruits and flowers. And since nostrils with
them took the place of mouths, they suffered terribly from evil odours, and
it was difficult to keep them alive, especially in a camp? ! ' Does the notice
reflect some sect who, like the Jains, abstained from all animal food and
kept their mouths covered lest they should breathe in minute insects ?
Of the south of India, Europe up to the Christian era knew little
more than a few names brought by merchantmen. So little was the
division of India into two worlds by the Vindhya realised that Strabo could
suppose all Indian rivers to take their rise in the Himalayas? . It was
chiefly as the country from which pearls came that the Greeks knew
Southern India. Pearls came from the coasts of the Pāņdya kingdom cor-
responding roughly with the modern districts of Madura and Tinnevelly,
and Megasthenes had heard, as we know, of Pandaea the daughter of
Heracles (Krishņa) who had become queen of a great kingdom in the south.
With her he also connected the pearl. Heracles, according to the legend
told him, wandering over the earth, had found this thing of beauty in the
sea, made, it might seem, for a woman's adornment. Wherefore from all
the sea pearls were brought together to the Indian coast for his daughter to
wear. The origin of the word which the Greek used for pearl, margarites,
is unknown.
Some confused knowledge on how pearls were procured had come to
the Greek writers through the traders' stories. They knew that they grew
in oysters. Two of the companions of Alexander, Androsthenes of Thasos,
who had gone in the fleet with Nearchus and wrote a book called
Ilavandous t'r,8 ’Iud:krs, and the chief usher Chares, had already some
information as to the varieties of pearls and the chief fisheries. The
oysters, Megasthenes understood, were caught in nets ; they went in shoals,
each shoal with a king of its own, like swarms of bees, and to capture the
king was to capture the shoal. The oysters, when caught, were put in jars,
1 Megasth. Frag. 30=Strabo XV, C. 711 ; Plin. Nat. Hist. VII, § 25. An
explanation of the legend is proposed by the Rev. H. Hosten, The Mouthless Indians of
Megasthenes, in the J. A. S. B. , 1912, pp. 291-301.
? XV, C. 690.
Athenaeus III, 93 A. D.
.
## p. 381 (#419) ############################################
XVI)
SOUTHERN INDIA
381
9
>
and as their flesh rotted the pearl was left disengaged at the bottom'. The
name of the extreme southern point of the peninsula had also travelled
the Greeks before the time of Strabo. He knew it as the country of the
ÇÕliaci”; this was derived from the name in local speech, Köri. The
legend, when it made a woman the sovereign of the south, was probably
reflecting the system of mother-right which has to some extent obtained
there even to the present day. Some of the physical characteristics of the
people of the south were known by report -- that they were darker in com-
plexion, for instance, than the Indians of the north. The facts of early
maturity and of the general shortness of life were also known. In the
legend narrated by Megasthenese, as we saw, the precocious maturity which
Heracles had bestowed upon his daughter by a miracle continued to be a
characteristic of the women of her kingdom. They were marriageable, and
could bear children, Megasthenes said, at seven years old. This exaggera-
tion was presumably due to the real fact of child-marriage. As to the
general length of life, forty years was the maximum-again a fact, the
relative shortness of life, exaggerated3.
In the book of Onesicritus occurred the first mention by a European
writer of Ceylon. He heard of it under' a name which the Greek represents
as Taprobane. It lay, of course, far outside the horizon of the Greeks, but
Onesicritus must have met people on the Indus who knew of the Southern
island by the report of merchants, or had perhaps fared thither themselves
along the coast of Malabar, and spoke of Tāpraparņi and of its elephants,
bigger and more terrible in war than those which the Greeks had seen in
India. Taprobane was seven days' journey according to the sources
followed by Eratosthenes, from the southernmost part of India (the Coliaci
= Cape Köri). The strait separating Ceylon from India is only forty miles
across, but it may have been true in practice that from the port whence
the merchants put out to go to Ceylon and the port where they landed was a
voyage of seven days. Onesicrituse put it at 20 days; we cannot say now
what fact underlay the misapprehension. When he said that the ‘size of
Taprobane was 5000 stadia the ambiguity of the statement already provoked
complaint in antiquity.
For many centuries the India known to the West was India as
portrayed by the historians of Alexander's expedition and by Megasthenes.
Although from the third century onwards there was a certain amount of
intercourse between the Mediterranean world and India, although Greek
kings ruled in the Punjab and Alexander's colonies were still represented
1 Megasth. Frag. 22=Arr. Ind. 8 ; Plin. Nat. Hist. IX, $ 111.
2 XV, C. 689.
3 Megasth. Frag. 23=Arr. Ind. 9.
4 Frag. 13=Strabo XV, C. 691 ; Frag. 22=Plin. Hist. Nat. VI, § 81.
5 Strabo XV, C. 690.
6 Onesier. Frag. 13=Strabo XV, C. 691.
2
-
## p. 382 (#420) ############################################
382
[Ch.
INDIA IN GREEK AND LATIN LITERATURE
by little bodies of men Greek in speech, although there must occasionally
have been seafaring men in the Greek ports who had seen the coasts of
India, or merchants who had made their way over the Hindu Kush, the
Greek and Latin learned world was content to go on transcribing the
books written generations before. These had become classical and shut
out further reference to reality. The original books themselves perished,
but their statements continued to be copied from writer to writer. Some
of the later Greek and Latin works which treated of India are known to us
to-day only by their titles or by a few fragments--the works of Apollodorus
of Arteinita (latter half of second century or first century B. C. ), the works of
the great geographer Eratosthenes (276-195 B. c. ) and of the voluminous
compiler, Alexander Polyhistor (105 till after 40 B. C. ). But a great deal of
the original books is incorporated in writings which we do still possess,
especially in the geographical work of Strabo (about 63 B. C. -19 A. D. ), the
historical work of Diodorus (in Egypt about 60 B. C. , still alive 36 B. c. ), the
encyclopaedic work of Pliny (published about 75 A. D. ). the tract of Arrian
about India (middle of socond century A. D. ), and the zoological work of
Aelian (end of second century A. D. ). Even Pliny had probably never had the
work of Megasthenes in his hands, but drew from it only at second or third
hand through Seneca and Varro. In the third century A. D. , when Philo.
stratus in his romance brings Apollonius of Tyana to India, it is still out
of the old traditional materials that what purports to be local colour all
comes.
So far as the stock of knowledge handed down from the third century
B. C. was increased at all during the following three centuries, it can
only have been from the source of information just indicated, the source
which might have been turned to so much richer account, had the curse of
literary convention not rested upon classical culture - the first-hand practical
knowledge possessed by Greek merchantmen who crossed the Indian
Strabo had sufficient freedom of mind to take some notice of
the Indian trade in his own day. From him we gather that, although
a considerable amount of Indian merchandise had flowed into Europe
by way of the Red Sea and Alexandria, when the Ptolemies ruled in Egypt
very few Greek ships had gone further than South Arabia. Goods had been
carried from India to South Arabia in Indian or Arabian bottoms. By the
time however that Strabo was in Egypt (25 B. C. ) a direct trade between
Egypt and India had come into existence, and he was told that 120 vessels
were sailing to India that season from Myos Hormos, the Egyptian
port on the Red Sea. A few Greek merchantmen, but very few, sailed
round the south of India to the mouth of the Ganges. The vessels
that went to India apparently made the journey by coasting along Arabia,
1 Strabo II, C. 118.
? Strabo XV, C. 686.
ocean.
## p. 383 (#421) ############################################
XVI]
TRADE CONTACT
383
Persia, and the Makrān, for it was not till the middle of the first century A. D.
that a Greek seaman, named Hippalus, discovered that the monsoon
could be utilised to carry ships from the straits of Bab-el-Mandeb over the
high seas to India'. It lies however outside the scope of this volume
to survey the additions made by means of this commercs under the Roman
Empire to the knowledge of India derived from the companions of Alexander
and Megasthenes. The additions never equalled in substancs or interest the
older books. Far on into the Middle Ages Christian Europe still drew its
conceptions of India mainly from books written before the middle of the
third century B. C.
1 Schoff, 1 he Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, p. 8.
## p. 384 (#422) ############################################
CHAPTER XVII
THE HELLENIC KINGDOMS OF SYRIA, BACTRIA,
AND PARTHIA
The mists of obscurity cling heavily round the course that events took
in India during the years that immediately followed the death of Alexander
the Great. The statements of the original authorities, besides being
meagre, are so fragmentary that they are seldom perfectly intelligible. One
fact, however, seems to stand out clearly.
As soon
as the grip of
the master-hand was removed, the native element began to recover strength
and courage, a process which must have been materially assisted by discord
amongst the Europeans who had been left behind, whether as soldiers or as
settlers. As conqueror of the Persian empire, Alexander had in herited the
system of government by satraps; ard, so far as can now be gathered, the
broad outline of his original organisation contemplated three great
Indian satra pies, one corresponding roughly to the modern province
of Sind, another covering the whole of the basin of the Upper Indus from
the foot of the Paropanisus, or Hindu Kush, to the banks of the Hydaspes
(Jhelum), and a third stretching from the southern shore of the last-named
river to the northern shore of the Hyphasis (Beās). The first two included
the old Achaemenid provinces of 'India' or 'the country of the Indus' and
Gandhāra which corresponds to the present districts of Peshāwar and
Rāwalpindi. The third represents probably the region 'conquered' and not
merely 'reclaimed by Alexander. In accordance with the traditional Indian
policy (Manu VII, 202) that a conquered kingdom should continue to
be governed by some member of its ancient royal family, very impor-
tant positions were assigned to the native rajas, Taxiles and Porus, the latter
being placed in sole charge of the satrapy that included his original
kingdom, the country between the Hydaspes and the Acesines (Chenāb)'.
According to Diodorus (XVIII; 3, 4), they were recognised as virtually inde-
pendent rulers. And they appear to have been quick to make use of their
1 For Taxiles, the king of Takshaçilā, and Porus (Paurava), the king of the Pūrus,
see Chapter XV, pp. 309, 313.
384
## p. 385 (#423) ############################################
XVII]
INDIA AFTER ALEXANDER
385
a
opportunity. The accounts of the division of the empire by Alexander's
generals at Babylon (323 B. C. ) and those of the subsequent partition
of Triparadisus (321 B. c. ) agree in pointing to a considerable modification
of the limits of the Indian satrapies as at first mapped out. A Macedonian
-- Pithon, son of Agenor – seems to be entrusted with the control of
the land lying between the Paroparisus and the Indus ; Taxiles is left
supreme in the country between the Indus and the Hydaspes ; and Porus is
given a great accession of territory, bis sphere of influence now extending
all the way down the main stream to the sea. Diodorus more than hints
that the recognition thus accorded to the native princes was due to a whole-
some respect for their material power : Antipater, he says (XVIII, 39, 6), felt
that it would be dangerous to attempt to circumscribe their jurisdiction
except with the support of an expedition equipped on a scale of the
first magnitude and commanded by a general of the highest capacity.
To some the story of this readjustment, and more particularly of the
aggrandisement of Porus, has appeared so surprising that they decline
to accept it as authentic, and are disposed to explain it away by an under-
lying confusion. But there is no sufficient ground for setting aside
the written record. Further, if Diodorus (XVI, 3, 2) and Quintus Curtius
(x, 10, 4) are right in stating that, so far as Asia was concerned, the
momentous assembly which decreed the partition of Babylon did not more
than ratify arrangements already sanctioned by the dead king, the
change must have come during the lifetime of Alexander. That there was
unrest in the land almost as soon as he had quitted it, is indeed
evident from what happened in the satrapy of the Upper Indus. Before he
reached Carmania on his westward march, be was overtaken by tidings of
the assassination of Philippus, the Macedonian governor whom he had
installed as satrap there. And, though we learn from Arrian (vr. 27, 2) that
the immediate cause of the murder was an ebullition of the undying
jealousy between Greeks and Macedonians, the incident may well have
been symptomatic of more deeply seated trouble. At all events Alexander
decided that it was not convenient to fill the place of Philippus at the
moment. Instead, he sent despatches to Taxiles and to a Thracian officer
called Eudamus or Eudemus, instructing them to make themselves res-
ponsible for the government until another satrap should be nominated.
Presumably their functions were to be separate. It is reasonable to suppose
that the general conduct of affairs would be delegated to Taxiles, and that
Eudamus would be given the command of the scattered bodies of Greek
and Macedonian troops, as well
of authority over the
various colonists of Hellenic nationality.
Whether the new appointment that Alexander had foreshadowed was
ever made, is doubtful. It may be that circumstances proved too strong
>
as some measure
## p. 386 (#424) ############################################
386
[CH.
SYRIA, BACTRIA, AND PARTHIA
>
>
for him, and that the arrangement revealed by the partitions of Babylon
and Triparadisus represents what he had perforce to assent to. In any case
the dual system of control, which he had set up as a temporary make-shift,
bore within it from the outset the seeds of intrigue and ultimate rupture.
Eudamus, it will be observed, is not mentioned in connexion with either of
the partitions. Yet he appears to have retained some sort of position as
leader of the Hellenic 'outlanders' in the valleys of the Indus and Hydas pes.
Ere long he drifted into conflict with the native Indian element. Before
317 B. c. he had Porus treacherously slain, seized his war-elephants. and
marched, with all the forces he could muster, to join the coalition of
Eastern satraps who had drawn together to oppose the arrogant pretensions
of their colleague of Media (Diod. xix, 14, 8). The thunder of the captains
and the shouting had also reached the ears of Pithon, son of Agenor, and
he too had abandoned his province to fling himself into the fray. Neither
ever returned. Eudamus met his doom at the hands of Antigonus (Diod.
XIX, 44, 1). Pithon fell fighting by the side of Demetrius at the battle of
Gaza (Diod. xix, 85, 2). Nor had either any successor in his Indian
command, a fact that is surely full of significance. May not their with-
drawal from India be most simply accounted for on the supposition that
each had become alive to the hopelessness of his situation ?
Such an hypothesis would be entirely consistent with the scene that
confronts us when next the curtain rises on the drama of Graeco-Indian
relations. Taxiles, like Porus, has disappeared from the stage. But his
place is filled by a figure of much more heroic proportions. By the time
that Seleucus Nicator, founder of the dynasty that bears his
made his position in Babylon so secure as to be able to turn his attention
to the extreme east of the dominions he had won, a new ruler had arisen in
India. Chandragupta or, as the Greeks called him, Sandrocottus, the first
of the Maurya emperors, had made himself master of the whole of the
north. In his youth he had seen Alexander the Great, and when the grew
to manhood he put into practice some of the lessons which Alexander's
success was calculated to teach. It has been conjectured that he employed
Greek mercenaries in his struggle with Nanda or Nandrus, the king of
Magadha (S. Bihār) on the ruins of whose power he rose to greatness ; he
certainly seems to have adopted western methods in the training and
discipline of his local levies. Under his leadership India threw off the last
remnants of the Macedonian yoke. And, if we can rely on Justin, the
revolution was not a bloodless one : he indicates (xv, 4) that such of the
Macedonian prefects as still held their posts were ruthlessly put to the
sword.
The date of the Indian expedition of Seleucus I is doubtful. Von
Gutschmid placed it c. 302 B. C. and, although his calculation rests on what
name, had
## p. 387 (#425) ############################################
XVII]
INVASION OF INDIA BY SELEUCUS
387
>
a
is probably an erroneous view as to the period when the coins of Sophytes
(cf. supra, p. 348) were issued, it is quite possible that he has come within
two or three years of the truth. It was not till 311 that the Satrap of
Babylon- he had not yet assumed the title of king-was free to quit his
capital with an easy mind, and devote his energies to consolidating his
authority in the more distant provinces. The task must have required time,
for some hard fighting had to be done, notably in Bactria. But, beyond
the bare statement of Justin (xv, 4) to that effect, we have no details. We
may suppose that about 305 or 304, at the latest, he deemed himself ready
to demand a reckoning with Chandragupta. Advancing (we may be certain)
by the route along the Kābul river, he crossed the Indus (Appian, Syr. 55).
The minute topographical knowledge which Strabo (xv, 689) and Pliny
(N. H. vi, 63) display, and more particularly the vague assertion of the latter
that 'all the remaining distances were searched out for Seleucus Nicator'
have led Droysen and others to conclude that he not merely - entered the
territory he had come to regain, but actually penetrated as far as Palibo-
thra (Pātaliputra) on the Ganges, the chief seat of his enemy's power,
whence he made his way along the banks of the river to the sea. The
premises, however, are scarcely substantial enough to bear so far-reaching
a conclusion. Pliny may quite well have had in his mind, not reconnais-
sances made during a campaign, but information gathered subsequently by
the Greek envoys who, as we shall see presently, resided at the court of the
Indian king.
Chandraeupta could put into the field more than half a million of
men, with 9000 war-elephants and numerous chariots to boot. If Seleucus
had really forced his way to the shores of the Bay of Bengal in the teeth
of an opposition so formidable, his astonishing feat was hardly likely to
have been left to a Roman geographer to chronicle. Besides, in that event
the upshot of the campagin would surely have been a more decided triumph.
As it is, the terms of peace point to a frank recognition by Seleucus that
his own arm was neither long enough nor strong enough to govern India
from Babylon. Invader and invaded, we are told, concluded an alliance
and sealed it by a further compact, which Appian (Syr. 55) calls a kndos,
Strabo (xv, 724) an ErtiyaLLÀ. According to ordinary Greek usage these
two terms are scarcely consistent one with another. The former would
naturally signify an actual marriage between individuals, and hence it is
frequently argued that Seleucus must have become either the father-in-law
or the son-in-law of Chandragupta. There seems, however, to be no room
in his family circle, as we otherwise know it, for any relationship of the
kind. Probably, therefore, it is safer to fall back on the technical meaning
of Strabo's word, and to suppose that what is implied is a convention
establishing a jus connubii between the two royal families. In that land of
caste a jus connubii between the two peoples is unthinkable.
.
>
## p. 388 (#426) ############################################
388
[CH
SYRIA, BACTRIA, AND PARTHIA
As regards territory, the arrangement appears, upon the face of it,
to have been entirely favourable to Chandragupta. Not only did Seleucas
acquiesce in his sovereignty over all the country beyond the Indus. He also
transferred to him the satrapies of Arachosia (Kandahār) and the Paro-
panisadae (Kābul), with at least some portion of Gedrosia (Baluchistān)
and of Aria (Herāt). In other words, the frontiers of the Maurya empire
were extended so as to embrace the southern half of Afghānistan and
perhaps the whole of British Baluchistān. The expression presented'
(eowke), which is used by Strabo (loc. cit. ) to describe the transaction, does
not preclude the possibility of the transfer having been made upon condi-
tions. A return gift of 500 war-elephants is, in fact, mentioned. But under
no circumstances could that have been looked on as an equivalent. We
may take it that there were further stipulations as to freedom of trade and
the like, such as would naturally accompany an ealyaula. There may even
have been a nominal and unmeaning acknowledgment of suzerainty. It
must be borne in mind that the written record contains nothing to show
that Seleucus suffered defeat, nothing even to suggest that the rival armies
ever came to blows at all. The probability is that, while he was still en-
deavouring to gauge the magnitude of the task that confronted him, an
urgent call for help reached him from the confederate king3 across the
2500 miles that separated him from Asia Minor. The instinct of self-
preservation required that he should assist them. If he allowed Antigonus
to crush Cassander, Lysimachus, and Ptolemy, his own turn would not be
long in coming. It was only politic, therefore, to make the best terms he
could with Chandragupta, whose 500 elephants reached the theatre of wra
in time to play a conspicuous part in the final overthrow of Antigonus at
Ipsus in the year 301.
For more than a generation after that battle there is an almost
complete blank in our knowledge of the history of Central Asia. Seleucus
himself took up his residence at Antioch on the Orontes. But he soon
realised that the new city lay too far west to be a convenient administrative
centre for the eastern portion of his empire. Accordingly he entrusted the
government of all the provinces beyond the Euphrates to his son Antiochus,
on whom after the lapse of a few years he conferred the title of king.
We are without definite information as to the exact date of this devolution
of authority. It is generally assigned to 293 B. C. , and cuneiform documents
undoubtedly bear the names of Siluku' and 'Antiuksu' as joint-kings from
289 onwards? . In 281 Seleucus was assassinated. According to Memnon
(F. H. G. III, 533, 12, 1) and Pausanias (1, 16, 2), Antiochus had already had
his powers as co-regent greatly amplified, the whole of Asia having been
committed to his care. In any case his father's death would render his
immediate presence in the west imperative, if his heritage was to be main-
1 Zeit. für Assyriologie, VII. 234, 226 VIII, 108; Keilinschrift. Bibl. III, 2, 136 f.
## p. 389 (#427) ############################################
XII
RELATIONS OF SYRIA WITH INDIA
389
>
tained unimpaired. To the west he accordingly went. But it seems highly
probable that the plan of stationing a viceroy of the east at Seleucia on the
Tigris was still continued. Though no inkling of this has survived in any
historian, cuneiform inscriptions record 'Antiuksu and 'Siluku' as joint-kings
from 275 (or possibly, 280) to 269, and a similar cooperation between
'Antiuksu' and 'Antiuksu' from 266 to 263. 'Siluku’ here is clearly Seleucus,
the elder son of Antiochus by Stratonice ; we gather from a chance frag-
ment of John of Antioch (F. H. G. iv, 558, 55) that he was put to death on
suspicion of conspiring against his father. The 'Antiuksu' who takes his
place, is no less clearly his younger brother, destined to become sole ruler
in 261 as Antiochus II (Theos).
Under all of these kings, including Antiochus II, the friendly relations
originally established with the Mauraya empire remained unbroken. The
indications of this, if few, are sufficient. Athenaeus (I, 32, 18 D) has
preserved a story of certain strange drugs sent as a present by Chandra-
gupta to Seleucus I. And it is to the same writer ( xiv, 67, 652F and 653a)
that we owe an anecdote of how Chandragupta's son, Bindusāra-or
Amitrochates, to give him his Greek name? ,- wrote to Antiochus I, asking
him to buy and have conveyed to him some sweet wine, some figs, and a
sophist to teach him to argue. Antiochus replied, forwarding the figs and
the wine, but explaining that sophists were not a marketable commodity
among the Greeks. Nor was the intercourse between the courts confined
to such occasional civilities. We know from Strabo and others that
Magasthenes repeatedly-mollakus is Arrian's word ( v, 6, 2 )- visited
Chandragupta's capital as an envoy of Seleucus, thereby acquiring a mass
of information which made his writings on India an invaluable storehouse
for later geographers, and that Daïmachus of Plataea also werit on
mission or missions from Antiochus I to Bindusāra, likewise embodying
his experiences in a book. Other Hellenic states must have been drawn
into the circle of amity, for Pliny (N. H. vi, 58) speaks in the same breath
of Megasthenes and of a certain Dionysius who (he explains) was des-
patched as an ambassador to India by Ptolemy Philadelphus. As Philadelphus
reigner from 285 to 246, the Maurya emperor to whom Dionysius
was accredited may have heen either Bindusāra or his more famous
son Acoka, whose attempt to convert the Hellenistic kings to
Buddhism is justly regarded as one of the most curious episodes in early
Indian history.
It is natural to suppose that such intimate diplomatic relations would
rest on a solid foundation of mutual commercial interest. And corrobora-
tive testimony is not altogether wanting. Strabo, speaking of the Oxus
(Amu Daria), states ( x1, 509) that it formed a link in an important chain
For the name, or rather title, see Chapter XX.
a
## p. 390 (#428) ############################################
390
[CH.
SYRIA, BACTRIA, AND PARTHIA
T
along which Indian goods were carried to Europe by way of the Caspian
and the Black Sea. He cites as one of his authorities Patrocles, who was
an admiral in the services of Antiochus I, and thus makes it clear that the
route was a popular one early in the third century B. C. Evidence of the
prosperity of Central Asia at this period is also furnished by the coins.
There need be no hesitation about associating with that region a well-known
series of silver pieces, of Attic weight, having on the obverse a laureate
head of Zeus, and on the reverse Athena fighting in a quadriga drawn by
elephants. The inscription BΑΣΙΑ ΕΩΣ ΣΕ ΛΕΥΚΟΥ shows that they must
be later than 306, when the royal title was first assumed. The denomination
of most common occurrence is the tetradrachm; but drachms, hemidra-
chms, and ohols are not infrequent. We are safe in assuming with Imhoof-
Blumer that the majority of them were minted at Babylon or at Seleucia
on the Tigris. A minority, which are of a quite distinctive and somewhat
coarser fabric, appear to hail from even farther east; the specimens in
the British Museum have nearly all been purchased at Rāwalpindi, or
obtained from collections formed in India. Generally, though not invari.
ably, these latter have been struck from regularly adjusted dies ( 9 )while
a few have monograms on the obverse (Pl. I, 15), features that at once
recall certain of the Athenian imitations spoken of in an earlier chapter as
coming from the same district (supra, p. 348). One small group of
p
tettradrachms and drachms, from regularly adjusted dies, bears the inscrip-
tion ΒΑΣΙΛΕΩΣ ΣΕΛΕΥΚΟΥ ΑΝΤΙΟΧΟΥ (PI. II, 2), indicating
probably, as six and Imhoof have suggested', that the coins were minted
during the viceroyalty of Seleucus, son of Antiochus I. The omission of
the father's kingly title has thus a sinister significance. Unlike the rest,
they are not of Attic weight, but follow the lighter standard already met
with above in another connexion (supra, p. 347); the everage weight of
five tetradrachms is only 2123 grains (13. 82 grammes). The monogram
is placed on the reverse. Very rare drachms, reading BAXI AEIN
ΣΕ ΛΕΥΚΟΥ ΚΑΙ ΑΝΤΙΟΧΟΥ, which are also struck on the lighter
standard and show the same monogram (Pl. II, 1), are plainly of kindred
origin. At the same time their superior style, coupled with the fact that
they are struck from unadjusted dies, proves them to be somewhat earlier.
In all likelihood they date from the period when Antiochus I himself was
acting as his father's viceroy.
If the witness of the coins is an inarticulate one, its cumulative
effect is nevertheless impressive. It proves that there was a busy life
throbbing on both sides of the Indian frontier during the forty or fifty
years about which history is silent, that merchants were constantly coming
and going, buying and selling. When the silence is at length broken,
1 J. P. Six, Num. Chron. , 1898, p. 226 ; F. Imhoof-Blumer, Num. Zeit. , 1913, p.
183, and Rev. suisse de Num. , 1917, pp. 48 ff.
## p. 391 (#429) ############################################
XVII]
REVOLTS OF BACTRIA AND PARTHIA
391
>
it is by the confused echo of an occurrence that was fraught with momen-
tous consequences to India's immediate future. The birth of the new
kingdom of Bactria was an event of first-rate political importance. Bactria
was the rich country between the Hindu Kush and the Oxus, corresponding
in large measure to Northern Afghānistān. Beyond it, between the Oxus
and the Jaxartes (Syr Daria), lay Sogdiāna (Bukhāra). The two provinces
had cost Alexander no small effort to subdue. Partly on this account,
and partly because of their natural wealth, and had planted them thickly
with Gåreek colonies. Probably Seleucus, who experienced at least equal
difficulty in getting his sovereignty acknowledged, had to encounter the
determined resistance of colonists as well as of natives.
In the end, as we
know, he triumphed. During the rest of his reign, as well as throughout
that of his successor, Bactria and Sogdiāna remained quiescent ; the policy
of stationing a viceroy at Seleucia was evidently justified by success. Under
Antiochus If they shook themselves entirely free. Our chief authority for
what happened is Justin. After speaking of the revolt of Parthia, he pro.
ceeds (XL1, 4) : At the same time Diodotus, governor of the thousand
cities of Bactria, rebelled and had himself proclaimed king. ' In most texts
the name of the leader of the movement is wrongly given as 'Theodotus. '
The mistake, which goes back to the manuscripts, can be readily accounted
for. The chronology is much more troublesome, since the several events
by which Justin seeks to date the Parthian outbreak are spread over
period of not less than ten years. In the face of so much inconsistency we
may be content with the broad conclusion that the formal accession of
Diodotus took place about 250 B. C. , at a time when Antiochus was not in
a position to put an effective veto on the proceeding. An examination of
the numismatic material may enable us to go a little further.
Among the coins béaring the name of Seleucus are very rare gold
staters and silver tetradrachms, having on the obverse a portrait of the
king with bull's horns, and on the reverse the head of a horned horse
(Pl. II, 3). The same types, with the legend BALIA EQE ANTIOXOY,
PI
are found on two unique silver pieces- a drachm and a tetradrachm
(Pl. II, 4)—which may belong to the joint reign. All of these are struck
from unadjusted dies, and all of them have on the reverse two monograms
which, to judge from their complexity and from the manner in which they
vary, must conceal the names of individual magistrates. Apparently in
direct line of succession to the preceding comes a gold and silver
series, beginning under Antiochus I and continued under Antiochus II, which
contains staters (Pl. II, 5 and 6), tetradrachms (Pl. II, 7 and 8), and smaller
deonminations. The reverse type is the same, but the coins
struck from carefully adjusted dies, usually î but in case î r. The
magistrates' names show litle variation. As a rule, there is only one, that
'
a
>
>
are
now
## p. 392 (#430) ############################################
392
[CH.
SYRIA, BACTRIA, AND PARTHIA
>
being A, A1, or @! The device of a horse's head would be peculiarly
appropriate to Bactria, with its famous cavalry, or to Sogdiāna ; and it is
undoubtedly from Afghnāistān and Bukhāra that the coins in question
usually come. As they cover at least part of the two reigns, they must be
to some extent contemporary with certain gold staters and silver drachms
which have a head of Antiochus I or of Antiochus II on the obverse, and
on the reverse the ordinary Seleucid type of the seated Apollo (Pl. II, 9 and
10). Here again the dies have been carefully adjusted (1) The
magistrate's name, too, is obviously the same, being invariably A4,00
It has sometimes been suggested that the monogram represents the name of
a mint rather than of a magistrate. As against that view it must be
remembered that the two parallel series differ not only in type but also in
style, the treatment of the ends of the king's diadem being specially
characteristic.
There can be no dispute as to the proper local attribution of the
second of these series.
recognised that the Indian name which Chares heard was Sūrya deva 'Sun-
god. Some ill-educated interpreter must have been misled by the
'
resemblance of sūrya 'sun' to surā-wine'.
The name 'Indians' was extended in its largest acceptance to cover
the barbarous tribes of mountain or jungle on the confines (f Brāhman
civilisation. In noting down what seemed to them odd points in the
physical characteristics or customs of these tribes the Greeks were moved
by an interest which is the germ of the modern science of anthropology.
Megasthenes noted that in the Hindu Kush the bodies of the dead were
eaten by their relations, as Herodotus had already stated of some aborigi-
nal people.
sources.
>
1 M. Crindle, Ancient India, p. 76. 2 See Rapson, Ancient Indiā, pp. 58. 61.
3 Strabo XV, C. 718. The god Indra seems to be identified with Zeus.
4 Athenaeus I, 27 D.
5 Megasth. Frag, 27=Strabo XV, C, 710.
>
## p. 380 (#418) ############################################
380
[CH.
INDIA IN GREEK AND LATIN LITERATURE
Even Megasthenes depended, of course, mainly upon his Indian
informants for knowledge of the peoples on the borders of the Indian
world, and he therefore repeated the fables as to the monstrous races
with one leg, with ears reaching to their feet and so on, which had long
been current in India and had already been communicated to the Greeks by
Scylax and Hecataeus and Ctesias. One would however like to know the
fact which lies behind his story that members of one tribe, living near the
sources of the Ganges, had been brought to the camp of Chandragupta-
'men of gentler manners - but without a mouth! They lived on th efumes
of roast meat and the smell of fruits and flowers. And since nostrils with
them took the place of mouths, they suffered terribly from evil odours, and
it was difficult to keep them alive, especially in a camp? ! ' Does the notice
reflect some sect who, like the Jains, abstained from all animal food and
kept their mouths covered lest they should breathe in minute insects ?
Of the south of India, Europe up to the Christian era knew little
more than a few names brought by merchantmen. So little was the
division of India into two worlds by the Vindhya realised that Strabo could
suppose all Indian rivers to take their rise in the Himalayas? . It was
chiefly as the country from which pearls came that the Greeks knew
Southern India. Pearls came from the coasts of the Pāņdya kingdom cor-
responding roughly with the modern districts of Madura and Tinnevelly,
and Megasthenes had heard, as we know, of Pandaea the daughter of
Heracles (Krishņa) who had become queen of a great kingdom in the south.
With her he also connected the pearl. Heracles, according to the legend
told him, wandering over the earth, had found this thing of beauty in the
sea, made, it might seem, for a woman's adornment. Wherefore from all
the sea pearls were brought together to the Indian coast for his daughter to
wear. The origin of the word which the Greek used for pearl, margarites,
is unknown.
Some confused knowledge on how pearls were procured had come to
the Greek writers through the traders' stories. They knew that they grew
in oysters. Two of the companions of Alexander, Androsthenes of Thasos,
who had gone in the fleet with Nearchus and wrote a book called
Ilavandous t'r,8 ’Iud:krs, and the chief usher Chares, had already some
information as to the varieties of pearls and the chief fisheries. The
oysters, Megasthenes understood, were caught in nets ; they went in shoals,
each shoal with a king of its own, like swarms of bees, and to capture the
king was to capture the shoal. The oysters, when caught, were put in jars,
1 Megasth. Frag. 30=Strabo XV, C. 711 ; Plin. Nat. Hist. VII, § 25. An
explanation of the legend is proposed by the Rev. H. Hosten, The Mouthless Indians of
Megasthenes, in the J. A. S. B. , 1912, pp. 291-301.
? XV, C. 690.
Athenaeus III, 93 A. D.
.
## p. 381 (#419) ############################################
XVI)
SOUTHERN INDIA
381
9
>
and as their flesh rotted the pearl was left disengaged at the bottom'. The
name of the extreme southern point of the peninsula had also travelled
the Greeks before the time of Strabo. He knew it as the country of the
ÇÕliaci”; this was derived from the name in local speech, Köri. The
legend, when it made a woman the sovereign of the south, was probably
reflecting the system of mother-right which has to some extent obtained
there even to the present day. Some of the physical characteristics of the
people of the south were known by report -- that they were darker in com-
plexion, for instance, than the Indians of the north. The facts of early
maturity and of the general shortness of life were also known. In the
legend narrated by Megasthenese, as we saw, the precocious maturity which
Heracles had bestowed upon his daughter by a miracle continued to be a
characteristic of the women of her kingdom. They were marriageable, and
could bear children, Megasthenes said, at seven years old. This exaggera-
tion was presumably due to the real fact of child-marriage. As to the
general length of life, forty years was the maximum-again a fact, the
relative shortness of life, exaggerated3.
In the book of Onesicritus occurred the first mention by a European
writer of Ceylon. He heard of it under' a name which the Greek represents
as Taprobane. It lay, of course, far outside the horizon of the Greeks, but
Onesicritus must have met people on the Indus who knew of the Southern
island by the report of merchants, or had perhaps fared thither themselves
along the coast of Malabar, and spoke of Tāpraparņi and of its elephants,
bigger and more terrible in war than those which the Greeks had seen in
India. Taprobane was seven days' journey according to the sources
followed by Eratosthenes, from the southernmost part of India (the Coliaci
= Cape Köri). The strait separating Ceylon from India is only forty miles
across, but it may have been true in practice that from the port whence
the merchants put out to go to Ceylon and the port where they landed was a
voyage of seven days. Onesicrituse put it at 20 days; we cannot say now
what fact underlay the misapprehension. When he said that the ‘size of
Taprobane was 5000 stadia the ambiguity of the statement already provoked
complaint in antiquity.
For many centuries the India known to the West was India as
portrayed by the historians of Alexander's expedition and by Megasthenes.
Although from the third century onwards there was a certain amount of
intercourse between the Mediterranean world and India, although Greek
kings ruled in the Punjab and Alexander's colonies were still represented
1 Megasth. Frag. 22=Arr. Ind. 8 ; Plin. Nat. Hist. IX, $ 111.
2 XV, C. 689.
3 Megasth. Frag. 23=Arr. Ind. 9.
4 Frag. 13=Strabo XV, C. 691 ; Frag. 22=Plin. Hist. Nat. VI, § 81.
5 Strabo XV, C. 690.
6 Onesier. Frag. 13=Strabo XV, C. 691.
2
-
## p. 382 (#420) ############################################
382
[Ch.
INDIA IN GREEK AND LATIN LITERATURE
by little bodies of men Greek in speech, although there must occasionally
have been seafaring men in the Greek ports who had seen the coasts of
India, or merchants who had made their way over the Hindu Kush, the
Greek and Latin learned world was content to go on transcribing the
books written generations before. These had become classical and shut
out further reference to reality. The original books themselves perished,
but their statements continued to be copied from writer to writer. Some
of the later Greek and Latin works which treated of India are known to us
to-day only by their titles or by a few fragments--the works of Apollodorus
of Arteinita (latter half of second century or first century B. C. ), the works of
the great geographer Eratosthenes (276-195 B. c. ) and of the voluminous
compiler, Alexander Polyhistor (105 till after 40 B. C. ). But a great deal of
the original books is incorporated in writings which we do still possess,
especially in the geographical work of Strabo (about 63 B. C. -19 A. D. ), the
historical work of Diodorus (in Egypt about 60 B. C. , still alive 36 B. c. ), the
encyclopaedic work of Pliny (published about 75 A. D. ). the tract of Arrian
about India (middle of socond century A. D. ), and the zoological work of
Aelian (end of second century A. D. ). Even Pliny had probably never had the
work of Megasthenes in his hands, but drew from it only at second or third
hand through Seneca and Varro. In the third century A. D. , when Philo.
stratus in his romance brings Apollonius of Tyana to India, it is still out
of the old traditional materials that what purports to be local colour all
comes.
So far as the stock of knowledge handed down from the third century
B. C. was increased at all during the following three centuries, it can
only have been from the source of information just indicated, the source
which might have been turned to so much richer account, had the curse of
literary convention not rested upon classical culture - the first-hand practical
knowledge possessed by Greek merchantmen who crossed the Indian
Strabo had sufficient freedom of mind to take some notice of
the Indian trade in his own day. From him we gather that, although
a considerable amount of Indian merchandise had flowed into Europe
by way of the Red Sea and Alexandria, when the Ptolemies ruled in Egypt
very few Greek ships had gone further than South Arabia. Goods had been
carried from India to South Arabia in Indian or Arabian bottoms. By the
time however that Strabo was in Egypt (25 B. C. ) a direct trade between
Egypt and India had come into existence, and he was told that 120 vessels
were sailing to India that season from Myos Hormos, the Egyptian
port on the Red Sea. A few Greek merchantmen, but very few, sailed
round the south of India to the mouth of the Ganges. The vessels
that went to India apparently made the journey by coasting along Arabia,
1 Strabo II, C. 118.
? Strabo XV, C. 686.
ocean.
## p. 383 (#421) ############################################
XVI]
TRADE CONTACT
383
Persia, and the Makrān, for it was not till the middle of the first century A. D.
that a Greek seaman, named Hippalus, discovered that the monsoon
could be utilised to carry ships from the straits of Bab-el-Mandeb over the
high seas to India'. It lies however outside the scope of this volume
to survey the additions made by means of this commercs under the Roman
Empire to the knowledge of India derived from the companions of Alexander
and Megasthenes. The additions never equalled in substancs or interest the
older books. Far on into the Middle Ages Christian Europe still drew its
conceptions of India mainly from books written before the middle of the
third century B. C.
1 Schoff, 1 he Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, p. 8.
## p. 384 (#422) ############################################
CHAPTER XVII
THE HELLENIC KINGDOMS OF SYRIA, BACTRIA,
AND PARTHIA
The mists of obscurity cling heavily round the course that events took
in India during the years that immediately followed the death of Alexander
the Great. The statements of the original authorities, besides being
meagre, are so fragmentary that they are seldom perfectly intelligible. One
fact, however, seems to stand out clearly.
As soon
as the grip of
the master-hand was removed, the native element began to recover strength
and courage, a process which must have been materially assisted by discord
amongst the Europeans who had been left behind, whether as soldiers or as
settlers. As conqueror of the Persian empire, Alexander had in herited the
system of government by satraps; ard, so far as can now be gathered, the
broad outline of his original organisation contemplated three great
Indian satra pies, one corresponding roughly to the modern province
of Sind, another covering the whole of the basin of the Upper Indus from
the foot of the Paropanisus, or Hindu Kush, to the banks of the Hydaspes
(Jhelum), and a third stretching from the southern shore of the last-named
river to the northern shore of the Hyphasis (Beās). The first two included
the old Achaemenid provinces of 'India' or 'the country of the Indus' and
Gandhāra which corresponds to the present districts of Peshāwar and
Rāwalpindi. The third represents probably the region 'conquered' and not
merely 'reclaimed by Alexander. In accordance with the traditional Indian
policy (Manu VII, 202) that a conquered kingdom should continue to
be governed by some member of its ancient royal family, very impor-
tant positions were assigned to the native rajas, Taxiles and Porus, the latter
being placed in sole charge of the satrapy that included his original
kingdom, the country between the Hydaspes and the Acesines (Chenāb)'.
According to Diodorus (XVIII; 3, 4), they were recognised as virtually inde-
pendent rulers. And they appear to have been quick to make use of their
1 For Taxiles, the king of Takshaçilā, and Porus (Paurava), the king of the Pūrus,
see Chapter XV, pp. 309, 313.
384
## p. 385 (#423) ############################################
XVII]
INDIA AFTER ALEXANDER
385
a
opportunity. The accounts of the division of the empire by Alexander's
generals at Babylon (323 B. C. ) and those of the subsequent partition
of Triparadisus (321 B. c. ) agree in pointing to a considerable modification
of the limits of the Indian satrapies as at first mapped out. A Macedonian
-- Pithon, son of Agenor – seems to be entrusted with the control of
the land lying between the Paroparisus and the Indus ; Taxiles is left
supreme in the country between the Indus and the Hydaspes ; and Porus is
given a great accession of territory, bis sphere of influence now extending
all the way down the main stream to the sea. Diodorus more than hints
that the recognition thus accorded to the native princes was due to a whole-
some respect for their material power : Antipater, he says (XVIII, 39, 6), felt
that it would be dangerous to attempt to circumscribe their jurisdiction
except with the support of an expedition equipped on a scale of the
first magnitude and commanded by a general of the highest capacity.
To some the story of this readjustment, and more particularly of the
aggrandisement of Porus, has appeared so surprising that they decline
to accept it as authentic, and are disposed to explain it away by an under-
lying confusion. But there is no sufficient ground for setting aside
the written record. Further, if Diodorus (XVI, 3, 2) and Quintus Curtius
(x, 10, 4) are right in stating that, so far as Asia was concerned, the
momentous assembly which decreed the partition of Babylon did not more
than ratify arrangements already sanctioned by the dead king, the
change must have come during the lifetime of Alexander. That there was
unrest in the land almost as soon as he had quitted it, is indeed
evident from what happened in the satrapy of the Upper Indus. Before he
reached Carmania on his westward march, be was overtaken by tidings of
the assassination of Philippus, the Macedonian governor whom he had
installed as satrap there. And, though we learn from Arrian (vr. 27, 2) that
the immediate cause of the murder was an ebullition of the undying
jealousy between Greeks and Macedonians, the incident may well have
been symptomatic of more deeply seated trouble. At all events Alexander
decided that it was not convenient to fill the place of Philippus at the
moment. Instead, he sent despatches to Taxiles and to a Thracian officer
called Eudamus or Eudemus, instructing them to make themselves res-
ponsible for the government until another satrap should be nominated.
Presumably their functions were to be separate. It is reasonable to suppose
that the general conduct of affairs would be delegated to Taxiles, and that
Eudamus would be given the command of the scattered bodies of Greek
and Macedonian troops, as well
of authority over the
various colonists of Hellenic nationality.
Whether the new appointment that Alexander had foreshadowed was
ever made, is doubtful. It may be that circumstances proved too strong
>
as some measure
## p. 386 (#424) ############################################
386
[CH.
SYRIA, BACTRIA, AND PARTHIA
>
>
for him, and that the arrangement revealed by the partitions of Babylon
and Triparadisus represents what he had perforce to assent to. In any case
the dual system of control, which he had set up as a temporary make-shift,
bore within it from the outset the seeds of intrigue and ultimate rupture.
Eudamus, it will be observed, is not mentioned in connexion with either of
the partitions. Yet he appears to have retained some sort of position as
leader of the Hellenic 'outlanders' in the valleys of the Indus and Hydas pes.
Ere long he drifted into conflict with the native Indian element. Before
317 B. c. he had Porus treacherously slain, seized his war-elephants. and
marched, with all the forces he could muster, to join the coalition of
Eastern satraps who had drawn together to oppose the arrogant pretensions
of their colleague of Media (Diod. xix, 14, 8). The thunder of the captains
and the shouting had also reached the ears of Pithon, son of Agenor, and
he too had abandoned his province to fling himself into the fray. Neither
ever returned. Eudamus met his doom at the hands of Antigonus (Diod.
XIX, 44, 1). Pithon fell fighting by the side of Demetrius at the battle of
Gaza (Diod. xix, 85, 2). Nor had either any successor in his Indian
command, a fact that is surely full of significance. May not their with-
drawal from India be most simply accounted for on the supposition that
each had become alive to the hopelessness of his situation ?
Such an hypothesis would be entirely consistent with the scene that
confronts us when next the curtain rises on the drama of Graeco-Indian
relations. Taxiles, like Porus, has disappeared from the stage. But his
place is filled by a figure of much more heroic proportions. By the time
that Seleucus Nicator, founder of the dynasty that bears his
made his position in Babylon so secure as to be able to turn his attention
to the extreme east of the dominions he had won, a new ruler had arisen in
India. Chandragupta or, as the Greeks called him, Sandrocottus, the first
of the Maurya emperors, had made himself master of the whole of the
north. In his youth he had seen Alexander the Great, and when the grew
to manhood he put into practice some of the lessons which Alexander's
success was calculated to teach. It has been conjectured that he employed
Greek mercenaries in his struggle with Nanda or Nandrus, the king of
Magadha (S. Bihār) on the ruins of whose power he rose to greatness ; he
certainly seems to have adopted western methods in the training and
discipline of his local levies. Under his leadership India threw off the last
remnants of the Macedonian yoke. And, if we can rely on Justin, the
revolution was not a bloodless one : he indicates (xv, 4) that such of the
Macedonian prefects as still held their posts were ruthlessly put to the
sword.
The date of the Indian expedition of Seleucus I is doubtful. Von
Gutschmid placed it c. 302 B. C. and, although his calculation rests on what
name, had
## p. 387 (#425) ############################################
XVII]
INVASION OF INDIA BY SELEUCUS
387
>
a
is probably an erroneous view as to the period when the coins of Sophytes
(cf. supra, p. 348) were issued, it is quite possible that he has come within
two or three years of the truth. It was not till 311 that the Satrap of
Babylon- he had not yet assumed the title of king-was free to quit his
capital with an easy mind, and devote his energies to consolidating his
authority in the more distant provinces. The task must have required time,
for some hard fighting had to be done, notably in Bactria. But, beyond
the bare statement of Justin (xv, 4) to that effect, we have no details. We
may suppose that about 305 or 304, at the latest, he deemed himself ready
to demand a reckoning with Chandragupta. Advancing (we may be certain)
by the route along the Kābul river, he crossed the Indus (Appian, Syr. 55).
The minute topographical knowledge which Strabo (xv, 689) and Pliny
(N. H. vi, 63) display, and more particularly the vague assertion of the latter
that 'all the remaining distances were searched out for Seleucus Nicator'
have led Droysen and others to conclude that he not merely - entered the
territory he had come to regain, but actually penetrated as far as Palibo-
thra (Pātaliputra) on the Ganges, the chief seat of his enemy's power,
whence he made his way along the banks of the river to the sea. The
premises, however, are scarcely substantial enough to bear so far-reaching
a conclusion. Pliny may quite well have had in his mind, not reconnais-
sances made during a campaign, but information gathered subsequently by
the Greek envoys who, as we shall see presently, resided at the court of the
Indian king.
Chandraeupta could put into the field more than half a million of
men, with 9000 war-elephants and numerous chariots to boot. If Seleucus
had really forced his way to the shores of the Bay of Bengal in the teeth
of an opposition so formidable, his astonishing feat was hardly likely to
have been left to a Roman geographer to chronicle. Besides, in that event
the upshot of the campagin would surely have been a more decided triumph.
As it is, the terms of peace point to a frank recognition by Seleucus that
his own arm was neither long enough nor strong enough to govern India
from Babylon. Invader and invaded, we are told, concluded an alliance
and sealed it by a further compact, which Appian (Syr. 55) calls a kndos,
Strabo (xv, 724) an ErtiyaLLÀ. According to ordinary Greek usage these
two terms are scarcely consistent one with another. The former would
naturally signify an actual marriage between individuals, and hence it is
frequently argued that Seleucus must have become either the father-in-law
or the son-in-law of Chandragupta. There seems, however, to be no room
in his family circle, as we otherwise know it, for any relationship of the
kind. Probably, therefore, it is safer to fall back on the technical meaning
of Strabo's word, and to suppose that what is implied is a convention
establishing a jus connubii between the two royal families. In that land of
caste a jus connubii between the two peoples is unthinkable.
.
>
## p. 388 (#426) ############################################
388
[CH
SYRIA, BACTRIA, AND PARTHIA
As regards territory, the arrangement appears, upon the face of it,
to have been entirely favourable to Chandragupta. Not only did Seleucas
acquiesce in his sovereignty over all the country beyond the Indus. He also
transferred to him the satrapies of Arachosia (Kandahār) and the Paro-
panisadae (Kābul), with at least some portion of Gedrosia (Baluchistān)
and of Aria (Herāt). In other words, the frontiers of the Maurya empire
were extended so as to embrace the southern half of Afghānistan and
perhaps the whole of British Baluchistān. The expression presented'
(eowke), which is used by Strabo (loc. cit. ) to describe the transaction, does
not preclude the possibility of the transfer having been made upon condi-
tions. A return gift of 500 war-elephants is, in fact, mentioned. But under
no circumstances could that have been looked on as an equivalent. We
may take it that there were further stipulations as to freedom of trade and
the like, such as would naturally accompany an ealyaula. There may even
have been a nominal and unmeaning acknowledgment of suzerainty. It
must be borne in mind that the written record contains nothing to show
that Seleucus suffered defeat, nothing even to suggest that the rival armies
ever came to blows at all. The probability is that, while he was still en-
deavouring to gauge the magnitude of the task that confronted him, an
urgent call for help reached him from the confederate king3 across the
2500 miles that separated him from Asia Minor. The instinct of self-
preservation required that he should assist them. If he allowed Antigonus
to crush Cassander, Lysimachus, and Ptolemy, his own turn would not be
long in coming. It was only politic, therefore, to make the best terms he
could with Chandragupta, whose 500 elephants reached the theatre of wra
in time to play a conspicuous part in the final overthrow of Antigonus at
Ipsus in the year 301.
For more than a generation after that battle there is an almost
complete blank in our knowledge of the history of Central Asia. Seleucus
himself took up his residence at Antioch on the Orontes. But he soon
realised that the new city lay too far west to be a convenient administrative
centre for the eastern portion of his empire. Accordingly he entrusted the
government of all the provinces beyond the Euphrates to his son Antiochus,
on whom after the lapse of a few years he conferred the title of king.
We are without definite information as to the exact date of this devolution
of authority. It is generally assigned to 293 B. C. , and cuneiform documents
undoubtedly bear the names of Siluku' and 'Antiuksu' as joint-kings from
289 onwards? . In 281 Seleucus was assassinated. According to Memnon
(F. H. G. III, 533, 12, 1) and Pausanias (1, 16, 2), Antiochus had already had
his powers as co-regent greatly amplified, the whole of Asia having been
committed to his care. In any case his father's death would render his
immediate presence in the west imperative, if his heritage was to be main-
1 Zeit. für Assyriologie, VII. 234, 226 VIII, 108; Keilinschrift. Bibl. III, 2, 136 f.
## p. 389 (#427) ############################################
XII
RELATIONS OF SYRIA WITH INDIA
389
>
tained unimpaired. To the west he accordingly went. But it seems highly
probable that the plan of stationing a viceroy of the east at Seleucia on the
Tigris was still continued. Though no inkling of this has survived in any
historian, cuneiform inscriptions record 'Antiuksu and 'Siluku' as joint-kings
from 275 (or possibly, 280) to 269, and a similar cooperation between
'Antiuksu' and 'Antiuksu' from 266 to 263. 'Siluku’ here is clearly Seleucus,
the elder son of Antiochus by Stratonice ; we gather from a chance frag-
ment of John of Antioch (F. H. G. iv, 558, 55) that he was put to death on
suspicion of conspiring against his father. The 'Antiuksu' who takes his
place, is no less clearly his younger brother, destined to become sole ruler
in 261 as Antiochus II (Theos).
Under all of these kings, including Antiochus II, the friendly relations
originally established with the Mauraya empire remained unbroken. The
indications of this, if few, are sufficient. Athenaeus (I, 32, 18 D) has
preserved a story of certain strange drugs sent as a present by Chandra-
gupta to Seleucus I. And it is to the same writer ( xiv, 67, 652F and 653a)
that we owe an anecdote of how Chandragupta's son, Bindusāra-or
Amitrochates, to give him his Greek name? ,- wrote to Antiochus I, asking
him to buy and have conveyed to him some sweet wine, some figs, and a
sophist to teach him to argue. Antiochus replied, forwarding the figs and
the wine, but explaining that sophists were not a marketable commodity
among the Greeks. Nor was the intercourse between the courts confined
to such occasional civilities. We know from Strabo and others that
Magasthenes repeatedly-mollakus is Arrian's word ( v, 6, 2 )- visited
Chandragupta's capital as an envoy of Seleucus, thereby acquiring a mass
of information which made his writings on India an invaluable storehouse
for later geographers, and that Daïmachus of Plataea also werit on
mission or missions from Antiochus I to Bindusāra, likewise embodying
his experiences in a book. Other Hellenic states must have been drawn
into the circle of amity, for Pliny (N. H. vi, 58) speaks in the same breath
of Megasthenes and of a certain Dionysius who (he explains) was des-
patched as an ambassador to India by Ptolemy Philadelphus. As Philadelphus
reigner from 285 to 246, the Maurya emperor to whom Dionysius
was accredited may have heen either Bindusāra or his more famous
son Acoka, whose attempt to convert the Hellenistic kings to
Buddhism is justly regarded as one of the most curious episodes in early
Indian history.
It is natural to suppose that such intimate diplomatic relations would
rest on a solid foundation of mutual commercial interest. And corrobora-
tive testimony is not altogether wanting. Strabo, speaking of the Oxus
(Amu Daria), states ( x1, 509) that it formed a link in an important chain
For the name, or rather title, see Chapter XX.
a
## p. 390 (#428) ############################################
390
[CH.
SYRIA, BACTRIA, AND PARTHIA
T
along which Indian goods were carried to Europe by way of the Caspian
and the Black Sea. He cites as one of his authorities Patrocles, who was
an admiral in the services of Antiochus I, and thus makes it clear that the
route was a popular one early in the third century B. C. Evidence of the
prosperity of Central Asia at this period is also furnished by the coins.
There need be no hesitation about associating with that region a well-known
series of silver pieces, of Attic weight, having on the obverse a laureate
head of Zeus, and on the reverse Athena fighting in a quadriga drawn by
elephants. The inscription BΑΣΙΑ ΕΩΣ ΣΕ ΛΕΥΚΟΥ shows that they must
be later than 306, when the royal title was first assumed. The denomination
of most common occurrence is the tetradrachm; but drachms, hemidra-
chms, and ohols are not infrequent. We are safe in assuming with Imhoof-
Blumer that the majority of them were minted at Babylon or at Seleucia
on the Tigris. A minority, which are of a quite distinctive and somewhat
coarser fabric, appear to hail from even farther east; the specimens in
the British Museum have nearly all been purchased at Rāwalpindi, or
obtained from collections formed in India. Generally, though not invari.
ably, these latter have been struck from regularly adjusted dies ( 9 )while
a few have monograms on the obverse (Pl. I, 15), features that at once
recall certain of the Athenian imitations spoken of in an earlier chapter as
coming from the same district (supra, p. 348). One small group of
p
tettradrachms and drachms, from regularly adjusted dies, bears the inscrip-
tion ΒΑΣΙΛΕΩΣ ΣΕΛΕΥΚΟΥ ΑΝΤΙΟΧΟΥ (PI. II, 2), indicating
probably, as six and Imhoof have suggested', that the coins were minted
during the viceroyalty of Seleucus, son of Antiochus I. The omission of
the father's kingly title has thus a sinister significance. Unlike the rest,
they are not of Attic weight, but follow the lighter standard already met
with above in another connexion (supra, p. 347); the everage weight of
five tetradrachms is only 2123 grains (13. 82 grammes). The monogram
is placed on the reverse. Very rare drachms, reading BAXI AEIN
ΣΕ ΛΕΥΚΟΥ ΚΑΙ ΑΝΤΙΟΧΟΥ, which are also struck on the lighter
standard and show the same monogram (Pl. II, 1), are plainly of kindred
origin. At the same time their superior style, coupled with the fact that
they are struck from unadjusted dies, proves them to be somewhat earlier.
In all likelihood they date from the period when Antiochus I himself was
acting as his father's viceroy.
If the witness of the coins is an inarticulate one, its cumulative
effect is nevertheless impressive. It proves that there was a busy life
throbbing on both sides of the Indian frontier during the forty or fifty
years about which history is silent, that merchants were constantly coming
and going, buying and selling. When the silence is at length broken,
1 J. P. Six, Num. Chron. , 1898, p. 226 ; F. Imhoof-Blumer, Num. Zeit. , 1913, p.
183, and Rev. suisse de Num. , 1917, pp. 48 ff.
## p. 391 (#429) ############################################
XVII]
REVOLTS OF BACTRIA AND PARTHIA
391
>
it is by the confused echo of an occurrence that was fraught with momen-
tous consequences to India's immediate future. The birth of the new
kingdom of Bactria was an event of first-rate political importance. Bactria
was the rich country between the Hindu Kush and the Oxus, corresponding
in large measure to Northern Afghānistān. Beyond it, between the Oxus
and the Jaxartes (Syr Daria), lay Sogdiāna (Bukhāra). The two provinces
had cost Alexander no small effort to subdue. Partly on this account,
and partly because of their natural wealth, and had planted them thickly
with Gåreek colonies. Probably Seleucus, who experienced at least equal
difficulty in getting his sovereignty acknowledged, had to encounter the
determined resistance of colonists as well as of natives.
In the end, as we
know, he triumphed. During the rest of his reign, as well as throughout
that of his successor, Bactria and Sogdiāna remained quiescent ; the policy
of stationing a viceroy at Seleucia was evidently justified by success. Under
Antiochus If they shook themselves entirely free. Our chief authority for
what happened is Justin. After speaking of the revolt of Parthia, he pro.
ceeds (XL1, 4) : At the same time Diodotus, governor of the thousand
cities of Bactria, rebelled and had himself proclaimed king. ' In most texts
the name of the leader of the movement is wrongly given as 'Theodotus. '
The mistake, which goes back to the manuscripts, can be readily accounted
for. The chronology is much more troublesome, since the several events
by which Justin seeks to date the Parthian outbreak are spread over
period of not less than ten years. In the face of so much inconsistency we
may be content with the broad conclusion that the formal accession of
Diodotus took place about 250 B. C. , at a time when Antiochus was not in
a position to put an effective veto on the proceeding. An examination of
the numismatic material may enable us to go a little further.
Among the coins béaring the name of Seleucus are very rare gold
staters and silver tetradrachms, having on the obverse a portrait of the
king with bull's horns, and on the reverse the head of a horned horse
(Pl. II, 3). The same types, with the legend BALIA EQE ANTIOXOY,
PI
are found on two unique silver pieces- a drachm and a tetradrachm
(Pl. II, 4)—which may belong to the joint reign. All of these are struck
from unadjusted dies, and all of them have on the reverse two monograms
which, to judge from their complexity and from the manner in which they
vary, must conceal the names of individual magistrates. Apparently in
direct line of succession to the preceding comes a gold and silver
series, beginning under Antiochus I and continued under Antiochus II, which
contains staters (Pl. II, 5 and 6), tetradrachms (Pl. II, 7 and 8), and smaller
deonminations. The reverse type is the same, but the coins
struck from carefully adjusted dies, usually î but in case î r. The
magistrates' names show litle variation. As a rule, there is only one, that
'
a
>
>
are
now
## p. 392 (#430) ############################################
392
[CH.
SYRIA, BACTRIA, AND PARTHIA
>
being A, A1, or @! The device of a horse's head would be peculiarly
appropriate to Bactria, with its famous cavalry, or to Sogdiāna ; and it is
undoubtedly from Afghnāistān and Bukhāra that the coins in question
usually come. As they cover at least part of the two reigns, they must be
to some extent contemporary with certain gold staters and silver drachms
which have a head of Antiochus I or of Antiochus II on the obverse, and
on the reverse the ordinary Seleucid type of the seated Apollo (Pl. II, 9 and
10). Here again the dies have been carefully adjusted (1) The
magistrate's name, too, is obviously the same, being invariably A4,00
It has sometimes been suggested that the monogram represents the name of
a mint rather than of a magistrate. As against that view it must be
remembered that the two parallel series differ not only in type but also in
style, the treatment of the ends of the king's diadem being specially
characteristic.
There can be no dispute as to the proper local attribution of the
second of these series.
