Greek Asia: March 2022

Tuesday, 29 March 2022

MENANDER I SOTER ~ A GREEK KING IN INDIA

Menander I Soter "The Saviour" (known as Milinda in Indian Pali sources) was the Indo-Greek king (165 BCE-130 BCE) who established a large empire in the South Asia and became a patron of Buddhism. He was born in the Caucasus, and was initially a king of Bactria.

On his way to India, Alexander the Great passed through Bamian around 327 BCE. and participated in a lively cultural exchange.Bamian lies on the Silk Road and was the scene of intensive Buddhist activity and commerce. Perhaps the most remarkable result of the fusion of eastern and western influences was the Gandhara School of art in India, which integrated Greek classical lines in the images of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas. The book Milindapanha (“Questions of King Milinda”), classified as a Hinayana text that was originally written in Pali and which has been translated into every major eastern and western language, is a literary testimony of the philosophical dialogue held between the Greek King Menandros and the Buddhist Monk Nagasena. India entered a new historical phase due to the cultural exchange with Greco-Bactria, and it is worth noting that King Milinda was given the title Maharaja Dharmika Menandrasa, “Milinda, the Righteous King,” and that a stupa was erected to enshrine his ashes after his death. It is claimed that Nagasena was a mighty king of Sagala, that he gave up his throne in favour of his son and became a Buddhist mendicant. Furthermore, that Nagasena was a descendant of Mahasammata, a king mentioned in the Pali Chronicles as the original ancestor of the Sakya family, to which the Buddha belonged.

The Greek geographer Strabo wrote that he "conquered more tribes than Alexander the Great." He is one of the few Bactrian kings mentioned by Greek authors, among them Apollodorus of Artemita, quoted by Strabo, who claims that the Greeks from Bactria were even greater conquerors than Alexander the Great, and that Menander was one of the two Bactrian kings, with Demetrius, who extended their power farthest into India.....His reign was long and successful.

Generous findings of coins testify to the prosperity and extension of his empire (with finds as far as Britain): the finds of his coins are the most numerous and the most widespread of all the Indo-Greek kings.

"Menander was the first Indo-Greek ruler to introduce the representation of Athena Alkidemos ("Athena, saviour of the people") on his coins, probably in reference to Athena Alkidemos in Pella, capital of Macedon. This type was subsequently used by most of the later Indo-Greek kings.

In the Milindanpanha, Menander is introduced as "King of the city of Sâgala, Milinda by name, learned, eloquent, wise, and able; and a faithful observer, and that at the right time, of all the various acts of devotion and ceremony enjoined by his own sacred hymns concerning things past, present, and to come. Many were the arts and sciences he knew--holy tradition and secular law; the Sânkhya, Yoga, Nyâya, and Vaisheshika systems of philosophy; arithmetic; music; medicine; the four Vedas, the Purânas, and the Itihâsas; astronomy, magic, causation, and magic spells; the art of war; poetry; conveyancing in a word, the whole nineteen."

Tibetan histories and works on Kdla Chakrait may be conjectured that S'ambhala, very probably, was the capital of the Bactrian Empire of the Eastern Greeks who had embraced Buddhism. It is also conjectured that the modern city of Balkh must have been the site of their latest capital. The name of King Menander {Minendra) who erected a very lofty chaiti/a has been mentioned by the Kashmirian poet Ksomendra, in Avaddna Kalpalatd, a work that was finished in about 1035 CE.

"According to an ancient Sri Lankan source, the Mahavamsa, Greek monks seem to have been active proselytizers of Buddhism during the time of Menander: the Yona (Greek) Mahadhammarakkhita (Sanskrit: Mahadharmaraksita) is said to have come from "Alasandra" (thought to be Alexandria of the Caucasus, the city founded by Alexander the Great, near today’s Kabul) with 30,000 monks for the foundation ceremony of the Maha Thupa ("Great stupa") at Anuradhapura in Sri Lanka, during the 2nd century BCE: "From Alasanda the city of the Yonas came the thera ("elder") Yona Mahadhammarakkhita with thirty thousand bhikkhus."

Strato I (Greek: Στράτων Α΄), was an Indo-Greek king who was the son of the Indo-Greek queen Agathokleia, ruled between c. 130–110 BCE in Northern India and that his father was the great king Menander I.