Around 170 BCE, two massive armies left Taxila for the great city of Pataliputra. One army marched through Punjab and the Gangetic plains, while the other headed down the Indus, then up through Malwa, and finally met the other at Pataliputra. These were the Greek armies of ‘Yavanaraja Dimita’, as the Bactrian-Greek ruler Demetrius I was known to Indians.
The Mauryan Empire had collapsed and Pushyamitra Shunga had just seized power after assassinating the last Mauryan ruler, Brihadratha Maurya. Taking advantage of the chaos, Demetrius I set out to complete what Alexander the Great did not have time to achieve – establish a Greek Kingdom in India.
One part of Demetrius’s army, under his general Menander, marched through Punjab, sacked Saketa (Ayodhya) and Mathura and captured Pataliputra. The rest of the army, under Apollodotus, marched down the Indus and captured the great city of Ujjain. Pataliputra and Ujjain fell, and with Demetrius at Taxila, Menander at Pataliputra and Apollodotus at Ujjain, the Greeks held three of the most important cities in India at the time.
We know of this forgotten chapter of Indian history from the unlikeliest of sources – a Sanskrit grammar textbook. In Mahabhasya, a 2nd century BCE text on the rules of grammar, Rishi Patanjali engages in a discussion on an ‘imperfective tense’, explaining that “the imperfect should be used to signify an action not witnessed by the speaker but capable of being witnessed by him and known to people in general”. To illustrate his point, he cites two examples. “Arunad Yavanah Saketam” [Yavanas besieged Saketa (Ayodhya)] and “Arunad Yavano Madhyamikam” (Madhyamikas were besieged by the Yavanas).
This has led historians like Dr R G Bhandarkar, Dr R C Mazumdar and others to conclude that there was indeed a Greek invasion of India during the lifetime of Rishi Patanjali. Another Sanskrit text, Gargi Samhita, an astrological work dating to the same time as Mahabhasya, also gives an account of the ‘Yavana’ invasion of Pataliputra.
Who were these ‘Yavanas’ and how did they reach the heart of India?
It is popularly believed that Greek contact with India began with the invasion of Alexander the Great in 327-325 BCE. However, the book Indo-Greeks (1957) by Indian historian and numismatist A K Narain throws some very interesting light on the subject. Much of what we know of the Indo-Greek rulers is only through their coins, and that is what makes Narain’s work so important.
After an extensive study of coins found in Central Asia, Narain concluded that there may have been Greek settlements in Central Asia that predated Alexander. Narain believed that the Persians exiled a number of Greeks to the eastern corners of their empire, where these Greeks intermarried with Persians and established their own settlements. These were the ‘Bactrian Greeks’, known to Indians as ‘Yavanas’. They were different from the ‘Hellenistic Greeks’, who came with Alexander the Great.
What is riveting is that the ‘Greek conquest of India’ is steeped in Greek Tradition. Ancient Greeks believed that Dionysus, the Greek God of Wine, travelled the world and taught people how to make wine. One of the most famous of His expeditions was to India, which is said to have lasted several years. In fact, this belief was so widespread that when Alexander the Great reached a settlement called Nysa on the banks of the Indus River, the locals told him that they were the descendants of the Greeks who had come with Dionysus to India!
Another myth also spoke of the conquest of India by Hercules, the son of Zeus. The 1st-century Greek historian Strabo, in his text Geographica, states, “Indians have never been engaged in foreign warfare nor have they ever been invaded or conquered by a foreign power, except by Hercules and Dionysus and lately by the Macedonians”. Perhaps it was this myth of the conquest of India that drew Alexander the Great here in the first place. We shall never know.
Following the death of Alexander in 323 BCE, his vast empire was split between his generals, with his possessions in India, Central Asia and Persia going to Seleucus Nikator. Between 305-302 BCE, Seleucus Nikator invaded India with a view to recapturing the Indian possessions of Alexander that had come under the control of Chandragupta Maurya.
The details of this conflict are not known but Seleucus Nikator ceded the Hindu Kush, Punjab and parts of Afghanistan to Chandragupta Maurya. Seleucus Nikator also gave his daughter Helena in marriage to Chandragupta and appointed Megasthenes as an ambassador in the Mauryan court. Megasthenes became famous for his text Indica, which gives a fascinating account of the India he saw at the time.
Around 250 BCE, the local governor of Bactria, Diodotus declared his independence from the Seleucid Empire founded by Seleucus Nikator, and established the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom that maintained close links with the Indian subcontinent. You will not find ‘Bactria’ on modern world maps but it is the ancient name for a region that roughly corresponds with Northern Afghanistan and Tajikistan, and bound by the Hindu Kush and the Pamir mountains. The Greco-Bactrian kingdom became extremely rich and powerful due to trade and the fertile land of the Amu Darya or Oxus river basin.
The Greco-Bactrians maintained close trade and cultural ties with India, the focal point of which was the city of ‘Ai-Khanum’ (‘Lady Moon’ in Uzbek), earlier known as ‘Alexandria on Oxus’ and ‘Eucratidia’. The city was located in the present-day Takhar province of Northern Afghanistan, at the confluence of the Panj and Kokcha rivers, both tributaries of the Amu Darya, and on the route to India.
These are the earliest coins that depict Vedic deities. For example, there is a coin depicting Goddess Lakshmi with a Brahmi legend ‘Rajane Agathukleyasasa’ or ‘King Agathocles’. Equally interesting are the coins that depict Balarama-Shankarshana with a mace and a plough, and Vasudeva-Krishna with a shanka (conch) and a Sudarshana Chakra. In addition, there are coins depicting stupas and the Bodhi tree with a railing, which is common Buddhist imagery. This tells us how closely connected the city of Ai-Khanum was to India, culturally.
Emperor Ashoka (304 to 232 BCE) is said to have sent missionaries to the Greco-Bactrian kingdom, where they converted many people to Buddhism. In fact, some of Ashoka’s missionaries were themselves Greek-Buddhist monks.
In Mahavamsha, an epic poem in Pali on the early history of Sri Lanka, there is a reference to how Ashoka sent a ‘Yona’ (Yavana) monk named Dharmarakshita to the Aparanta country (Konkan coast) to preach Buddhism. The Ashokan edict at Kandahar in Afghanistan is written in Greek and Aramaic, which tells us about the large Greek settlement there.
Demetrius’s Onslaught
After the death of Ashoka, a series of weak rulers led to the decline of the Mauryan power. In 180 BCE, Brihadhrata Maurya was assassinated by his general Pushyamitra Shunga during a military parade. Taking advantage of the chaos that followed, Greco-Bactrian ruler, Demetrius I invaded India, sending his armies to conquer some of India’s great cities like Mathura, Saketa (Ayodhya) and Pataliputra.
Demetrius was victorious in his campaigns,and a new era, the Era of the Greek Kingdoms, began in India. This time period is also known as The Yavana Era. With his kingdom expanding deep into India, Demetrius moved his capital to Sirkap, just opposite the river bank from the city of Taxila (near present-day Peshawar). The ruins of Sirkap show that it was built according to the ‘Hippodamian’ grid-plan characteristic of Greek cities. It was organized around one main avenue and 15 perpendicular streets.
What is fascinating is that at a stupa at Sirkap has the earliest known motif of the ‘Double Headed’ Eagle, which later spread across India as a symbol of royalty. Interestingly, it is today used by the state of Karnataka, in present-day India!
In Indian texts like the Gargi Samhita, King Demetrius is known as ‘Yavanaraja Dimita’ or ‘Dharmamita’. We know very little of Demetrius after his India conquest.
The death of Demetrius saw the decline of the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom. The Yuezhi tribe from China (later known as Kushanas) began to invade Bactria from the north. In the 1st century BCE, King Heliocles moved his capital to the Kabul valley, from where he ruled Punjab.
The Greek rulers who ruled from India after the fall of Bactria to the Scythians were called ‘Indo-Greeks’ to distinguish them from the ‘Bactrian Greeks’. The ‘Indo-Greek’ Kings ruled much of North India, the most prominent among them being King Menander, the General of Demetrius I, who had marched to Pataliputra. He set up his own kingdom and ruled from Sagala, modern-day Sialkot (in Pakistan’s Punjab).
The Greek geographer Strabo wrote that Menander had “conquered more tribes than Alexander the Great”. The sheer number of his coins found across India has led historians to conclude that he probably presided over a very prosperous empire. But Menander is the most well known Indo-Greek king due to a Buddhist text known as Milinda Panha.
“King of the city of Sâgala in India, 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.”
Not just Buddhist sources but even Greek accounts such as that of 1st century CE Greek scholar Plutarch of Chaeronea praise the just rule of Menander and claim that just like Buddha, Menander’s relics too were distributed among different stupas across North-West India.
The Milinda Panha states:
“But when one Menander, who had reigned graciously over the Bactrians, died afterwards in the camp, the cities indeed by common consent celebrated his funerals; but coming to a contest about his relics, they were difficultly at last brought to this agreement, that his ashes being distributed, everyone should carry away an equal share, and they should all erect monuments to him.”
Menander’s greatest legacy was the establishment of Greco-Buddhism, which saw a revival in art that was a unique synthesis of Greek and Buddhist influences. Menander’s successors depicted themselves or their Greek deities forming with the right hand a symbolic gesture identical to the Buddhist vitarka mudra and started to adopt on their coins the Pali title of ‘Dharmikasa’, meaning ‘follower of the Dharma’. During his reign, we see friezes of Greek-looking people appearing on the stupas at Sanchi and Bharhut.
Interesting fact In 1950, Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar started an educational college in Aurangabad, Maharashtra, which he named ‘Milind Mahavidyalaya’ after the Indo-Greek King Menander I..
Τhe cultural influence of the Yavanas or Greeks can be found across India. In the heart of India, in Besnagar near Bhopal, you will find the Heliodorus pillar. Around 115 BCE, King Antialkidas sent Heliodorus as his ambassador to the court of the Shunga king Bhagabhadra in Vidisha. A staunch devotee of Vishnu, Heliodorus built a Garuda pillar, where he described himself as a follower of the Bhagavata cult. In a number of cave complexes of Western India, such as Karla, Nashik and Manmodi, you will find references to ‘Yavana’ donors.
Perhaps the last reference to Indo-Greek rule in India is what is known as the Yavanarajya inscription, also called the Maghera Well Stone Inscription discovered in the village of Maghera, 17 km north of Mathura in 1988. The inscription mentions a donation for a water well to the community “in the year 116 of the Yavanarajya”. This roughly corresponds to 69 or 70 BCE.
Two things can be deduced from the inscription, the first being that Mathura was still under the rule of the Yavanas (Indo-Greeks) at the time and that the Indo-Greeks had their own calendar. The Yavana Era or the Yona era was earlier thought to have been started by Demetrius I .
The end of Indo-Greek administration at around 10 CE did not signify the end of the Greek influence in India. It continued through the Indo- Scythians and the Hellenistic Kingdom of the Kushans. The artistic movements of Gandhara and Seres -Serindian Art, were prevalent throughout India.But their strong cultural legacy continued for centuries. It is interesting how the ‘Yavanarajya’ continued to be a source of legitimacy for centuries. German historian Harry Falk in his paper Ancient Indian Eras: An Overview writes about how, when the Kushana king Kanishka launched his own era around 127 CE, he pegged it to precisely 300 years after the ‘Yavana Era’. Falk argues that Kanishka wanted to link his own rule with that of the Indo-Greeks, who had first linked Central Asia and India.
Edited from History of India
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