Greco-Bactrian Kingdom
The Greco-Bactrians were a dynasty of Greek kings who controlled Bactria and Sogdiana, an area comprising today's northern Afghanistan and parts of Central Asia, the easternmost area of the Hellenistic world, from 250 to 125 BCE. Their expansion into northern India established the Indo-Greek Kingdom, which was to last until around 10 CE.
Independence from the Seleucid Empire (250 BCE)
The Greco-Bactrian Kingdom was founded by the Seleucid military governor of Bactria Diodotus around 250 BCE when he wrestled independence for his territory from the Seleucid Empire.
- "The Greeks who caused Bactria to revolt grew so powerful on account of the fertility of the country that they became masters, not only of Ariana, but also of India, as Apollodorus of Artemita says: and more tribes were subdued by them than by Alexander... Their cities were Bactra (also called Zariaspa, through which flows a river bearing the same name and emptying into the Oxus), and Darapsa, and several others. Among these was Eucratidia, which was named after its ruler." (Strabo, XI.XI.I)
At about the same time in the West, the Parthian Arsacid Dynasty was rising, therefore cutting the Greco-Bactrians from direct contacts with the Greek world. Overland trade continued at a reduced rate, while sea trade between Greek Egypt and Bactria developed.
Diodotus was succeeded by his son Diodotus II.
The Euthydemid dynasty (230 BCE)
Euthydemus overthrew Diodotus II around 230 BCE and started his dynasty. Euthydemus's control extended to Sogdiana, reaching and going beyond the city of Alexandria Eschate founded by Alexander the Great in Ferghana.
Conflict with the Seleucid empire and Parthia
Euthydemus was attacked by the Seleucid ruler Antiochus III around 210 BCE. Although commanding 10,000 horsemen, Euthydemus initialy lost a battle on the Arius [1] and had to retreat. He then succesfully resisted a two-year siege in the fortified city of Bactra, before Antiochus finally decided to recognize the new ruler, and to offer one of his daughters to Euthydemus's son Demetrius around 206 BCE [2]. Classical accounts also relate that Euthydemus negotiated peace with Antiochus III by suggesting that he deserved credit for overthrowing the original rebel Diodotus, and that he was protecting Central Asia from nomadic invasions thanks to his defensive efforts:
- "...for if he did not yield to this demand, neither of them would be safe: seeing that great hords of Nomads were close at hand, who were a danger to both; and that if they admitted them into the country, it would certainly be utterly barbarised." (Polybius, 11.34).
Following the departure of the Seleucid army, the Bactrian kingdom seems to have expanded. In the west, areas in nort-eastern Iran may have been absorbed, possibly as far as into Parthia, whose ruler had been defeated by Antiochus the Great. These territories possibly are identical with the Bactrian satrapies of Tapuria and Traxiane.
Contacts with Eastern Central Asia and China
To the north, Euthydemus also ruled Sogdiana and Ferghana, and there are indications that from Alexandria Eschate the Greco-Bactrians may have led expeditions as far as Kashgar and Urumqi in Chinese Turkestan, leading to the first known contacts between China and the West around 220 BCE. The Greek historian Strabo too writes that:
Several statuettes and representations of Greek soldiers have been found north of the Tien Shan, on the doorstep to China, and are today on display in the Xinjiang museum at Urumqi (Boardman).
Greek influences on Han art have often been suggested (Hirth, Rostovtzeff). Designs with rosette flowers, geometric lines, and glass inlays, suggestive of Hellenistic influences, can be found on some early Han bronze mirrors, dated between 300-200 BCE. There is a possibility that the 210 BCE Terracotta Army of the first great Chinese emperor Qin Shi Huang, with its colored life-size realism and technical virtuosity, may have been inspired by Greek statuary, as there is no prior evidence of any Chinese realistic life-sized human statues before the reign of Qin. The introduction of China's first round coinage, the banliang, was also ordered by the same emperor. Before uniting China, the Qin were the westernmost people of China, located in Gansu, and were the most likely to receive such influence.
Numismatics also suggest that some technology exchanges may have occurred on these occasions: the Greco-Bactrians were the first in the world to issue cupro-nickel (75/25 ratio) coins 1, an alloy technology only known by the Chinese at the time under the name "White copper" (some weapons from the Warring States Period were in copper-nickel alloy 2 ). The practice of exporting Chinese metals, in particular iron, for trade is attested around that period. Kings Agathocles and Pantaleon made these coin issues around 170 BCE. Copper-nickel would not be used again in coinage until the 19th century.
The Han Dynasty explorer and ambassador Zhang Qian visited Bactria in 126 BCE, and reported the presence of Chinese products in the Bactrian markets:
- ""When I was in Bactria (Ta-Hia)", Zhang Qian reported, "I saw bamboo canes from Qiong and cloth made in the province of Shu (territories of southwestern China). When I asked the people how they had gotten such articles, they replied, "Our merchants go buy them in the markets of Shendu (India)."" (Shiji 123, Sima Qian, trans. Burton Watson).
Upon his return, Zhang Qian informed the Chinese emperor Wu-Ti of the level of sophistication of the urban civilizations of Ferghana, Bactria and Parthia, who became interested in developing commercial relationship them:
- "The Son of Heaven on hearing all this reasoned thus: Ferghana (Ta-Yuan) and the possessions of Bactria (Ta-Hia) and Parthia (An-Xi) are large countries, full of rare things, with a population living in fixed abodes and given to occupations somewhat identical with those of the Chinese people, but with weak armies, and placing great value on the rich produce of China" (Han Shu, Former Han History).
Numerous Chinese missions were then sent to Central Asia, triggering the development of the Silk Road from the end of the 2nd century BCE.
Contacts with India (250-180)
The Indian emperor Chandragupta, founder of the Mauryan dynasty, had re-conquered India from Alexander the Great around 322 BCE. However, contacts were kept with his Greek neighbours in the Seleucid Empire, Chandragupta received the daughter of the Seleucid king Seleucus I after a peace treaty, therefore probably creating a dynastic alliance, and several Greeks, such as the historian Megasthenes, resided at the Mauryan court. Subsequently, each Mauryan king had a Greek ambassador at his court.
Chandragupta's grandson Asoka converted to the Buddhist faith and became a great proselytizer in the line of the traditional Pali canon of Theravada Buddhism, directing his efforts towards the Indian and the Hellenistic worlds from around 250 BCE. According to the Edicts of Ashoka, set in stone, some of them written in Greek, he sent Buddhist emissaries to the Greek lands in Asia and as far as the Mediterranean. The edicts name each of the rulers of the Hellenic world at the time.
- "The conquest by Dharma has been won here, on the borders, and even six hundred yojanas (4,000 miles) away, where the Greek king Antiochos rules, beyond there where the four kings named Ptolemy, Antigonos, Magas and Alexander rule, likewise in the south among the Cholas, the Pandyas, and as far as Tamraparni." (Edicts of Ashoka, 13th Rock Edict, S. Dhammika).
Some of the Greek populations that had remained in northwestern India apparently converted to Buddhism. Furthermore, according to Pali sources, some of Ashoka's emissaries were Greek Buddhist monks, indicating close religious exchanges between the two cultures:
- "When the thera (elder) Moggaliputta, the illuminator of the religion of the Conqueror (Ashoka), had brought the (third) council to an end (...) he sent forth theras, one here and one there: (...) and to Aparantaka (the "Western countries" corresponding to Gujarat and Sindh) he sent the Greek (Yona) named Dhammarakkhita". (Mahavamsa XII).
Greco-Bactrians probably received these Buddhist emissaries and somehow tolerated the Buddhist faith, although little proof remains. In the 2nd century CE, the Christian dogmatist Clement of Alexandria recognized the existence of Buddhist Sramanas among the Bactrians ("Bactrians" meaning "Oriental Greeks" in that period), and even their influence on Greek thought:
- "Thus philosophy, a thing of the highest utility, flourished in antiquity among the barbarians, shedding its light over the nations. And afterwards it came to Greece. First in its ranks were the prophets of the Egyptians; and the Chaldeans among the Assyrians; and the Druids among the Gauls; and the Sramanas among the Bactrians ("Σαρμαναίοι Βάκτρων"); and the philosophers of the Celts; and the Magi of the Persians, who foretold the Saviour's birth, and came into the land of Judaea guided by a star. The Indian gymnosophists are also in the number, and the other barbarian philosophers. And of these there are two classes, some of them called Sramanas ("Σαρμάναι"), and others Brahmins ("Βραφμαναι")." Clement of Alexandria "The Stromata, or Miscellanies" Book I, Chapter XV [3]
Expansion into India (after 180 BCE)
See also: Indo-Greek Kingdom
Demetrius, the son of Euthydemus, started an invasion of India from 180 BCE, a few years after the Mauryan empire had been overthrown by the Sunga dynasty, under which Buddhism was persecuted. It has been suggested that the invasion of India was intended to show their support for the Mauryan empire, and to protect the Buddhist faith from the religious persecutions of the Sungas.
Demetrius seems to have been as far as the imperial capital Pataliputra in eastern India (today Patna). The invasion was completed by 175 BCE. This established in northern India what is called the Indo-Greek Kingdom, which lasted for almost two centuries until around 10 CE. The Buddhist faith flourished under the Indo-Greek kings, foremost among them Menander I.
It was also a period of great cultural syncretism, exemplified by the development of Greco-Buddhism.
Usurpation of Eucratides
Back in Bactria, Eucratides, either a general of Demetrius or an ally of the Seleucids, managed to overthrow the Euthydemid dynasty and establish his own rule around 170 BCE, probably dethroning Antimachus I and Antimachus II. The Indian branch of the Euthydemids tried to strike back. An Indian king called Demetrius (very likely Demetrius II) is said to have returned to Bactria with 60,000 men to oust the usurper (Justin XLI,6,4), but he apparently was defeated and killed in the encounter.
Eucratides campaigned extensively in northwestern India, possibly as far as the Jhelum River in Punjab, but his dynasty was ultimately repulsed by Menander I, who managed to create a huge unified territory.
Defeat against Parthia
Concurrently, and possibly during one of his Indian campaigns, Eucratides' Bactria was attacked and defeated by the Parthian king Mithridates I, possibly in alliance with partisans of the Euthydemids (Justin, XLI,6,3). In a confused account Justin explains that Eucratides was killed on the field by "his son and joint king", who would be his own son, either Eucratides II or Heliocles I (although there are speculations that it could be his enemy's son Demetrius II). The son drove over Eucratides' bloodied body with his chariot and left him dismembered without a sepulture: "Per sanguinem ejus currum egit et corpus abici insepultum jussit" (Justin XLI,6,5).
Following his victory, Mithridates I gained Bactria's territory west of the Arius, the regions of Tapuria and Traxane. Heliocles I ended up ruling in what territory remained. The defeat, both in the west and the east, may have left Bactria very weakened and open to the nomadic invasions from the north that would spell its end.
Nomadic invasions
First Yueh-Chih expansion (c. 162 BCE)
According to the Han Chronicles, following a crushing defeat in 162 BCE by the Xiongnu (Huns), the nomadic tribes of the Yueh-Chih fled from the Tarim Basin towards the west, crossed the neighbouring urban civilization of the "Ta-Yuan" (probably the Greek possessions in Ferghana), and re-settled north of the Oxus in modern-day Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, in the middle of Greco-Bactrian territory. The Ta-Yuan remained a healthy and powerful urban civilization which had numerous contacts and exchanges with China from 130 BCE.
It is not clear whether the incursion of the Yueh-Chih consisted in an invasion of the Greco-Bactrian territory, or possibly a resettlement in front of the Xiongnu attacks from the north, reminescent of the Roman practice of the foederati. The Yueh-chi certainly did not destroy the Greek settlements of the Ferghana, and later adopted many elements of the Hellenic civilization. When Zhang Qian visited the Yueh-Chih in 126 BCE, trying to obtain their alliance to fight the Xiong-Nu, he described them as living peacefully and content, unwilling to be involved in such a fight.
Second Yueh-Chih expansion (c. 120 BCE)
The Yueh-Chih further expanded southward into Bactria around 120 BCE, apparently pushed out by invasions from the northern Wu-Sun. It seems they also pushed Scythian tribes before them, who continued to India, where they came to be identified as Indo-Scythians.
The invasion is also described in western Classical sources from the 1st century BCE, with different names than those used by the Chinese:
- "The best known tribes are those who deprived the Greeks of Bactriana, the Asii, Pasiani, Tochari, and Sacarauli, who came from the country on the other side of the Jaxartes, opposite the Sacae and Sogdiani."
(Strabo, 11-8-1)
Around 125 BCE the king Heliocles abandoned Bactria and moved his capital to the Kabul valley, from where he ruled his Indian holdings. He is technically the last Greco-Bactrian king, although several of his descendants, moving beyond the Hindu Kush, would form the western part of the Indo-Greek kingdom until around 50 BCE.
The Yuezhi remained in Bactria, where they were to stay more than a century. They became Hellenized to some degree, as suggested by their adoption of the Greek alphabet and by some remaining coins, minted in the style of the Greco-Bactrian kings, with the text in Greek.
Around 12 BCE the Yuezhi were then to move to northern India where they established the Kushan Empire.
Greek culture in the East
The Greco-Bactrians were known for their high level of Hellenistic sophistication, and kept regular contact with both the Mediterranean and neighbouring India. They were on friendly terms with India and exchanged ambassadors.
Their cities, such as Ai-Khanoum (probably Alexandria on the Oxus), demonstrate a sophisticated Hellenistic urban culture. "It has all the hallmarks of a Hellenistic city, with a Greek theater, gymnasium and some Greek houses with colonnaded courtyards" (Boardman).
Some of the Greco-Bactrian coins, and those of their successors the Indo-Greeks, are considered the finest examples of Greek numismatic art with "a nice blend of realism and idealization", including the largest coins to be minted in the Hellenistic world: the largest gold coin was minted by Eucratides (reigned 171-145 BCE), the largest silver coin by the Indo-Greek king Amyntas (reigned c. 95-90 BCE). The portraits "show a degree of individuality never matched by the often bland depictions of their royal contemporaries further West" (Roger Ling, "Greece and the Hellenistic World").
Main Greco-Bactrian kings and territories
House of Diodotus
Territories of Bactria, Sogdiana, Ferghana, Arachosia:
- Diodotos I (reigned c. 250-240 BCE) Coins
- Diodotus II (reigned c. 240-230 BCE) Son of Diodotus I Coins
Many of the dates, territories, and relationships between Greco-Bactrian kings are tentative and essentially based on numismatic analysis and a few Classical sources. The following list of kings, dates and territories after the reign of Demetrius is derived from the latest and most extensive analysis on the subject, by Osmund Bopearachchi ("Monnaies Gréco-Bactriennes et Indo-Grecques, Catalogue Raisonné", 1991).
House of Euthydemus
Territories of Bactria, Sogdiana, Ferghana, Arachosia:
- Euthydemus I (reigned c. 223- c.200 BCE) Overthrew Diodotus II. Coins
The descendants of the Greco-Bactrian king Euthydemus invaded northern India around 190 BCE. Their dynasty was probably thrown out of Bactria after 170 BC by the new king Eucratides, but remained in the Indian domains of the empire at least until the 150s BCE.
- Demetrius I (reigned c. 200–180 BCE) Son of Euthydemus I. Greco-Bactrian king, and conqueror of India. Coins
The territory won by Demetrius was separated between western and eastern parts, ruled by several sub-kings and successor kings:
Territory of Bactria
- Euthydemus II (c 180 BCE), probably a son of Demetrius. Coins
- Antimachus I (possibly 180-165 BCE), brother of Demetrius. Defeated by usurper Eucratides. Coins
Territories of Paropamisadae, Arachosia, Gandhara, Punjab
- Pantaleon (190s or 180s BCE) Possibly another brother and co-ruler of Demetrius I.
- Agathocles (c180-170 BCE) Yet another brother? Coins
- Apollodotus I (reigned c. 175–160 BCE) A fourth brother?
- Antimachus II Nikephoros (160-155 BCE)
- Demetrius II (155-150 BCE) Coins
- Menander (reigned c. 150–130 BCE). Legendary for the size of his Kingdom, and his support of the Buddhist faith. It is unclear whether he was related to the other kings, and thus if the dynasty survived further. Coins
House of Eucratides
Territory of Bactria and Sogdiana
- Eucratides I 170-c.145 BCE Coins
- Plato co-regent c.166 BCE
- Eucratides II 145-140 BCE Coins
- Heliocles (r.c. 145-130 BCE).
Heliocles, the last Greek king of Bactria, was invaded by the nomadic tribes of the Yueh-Chih from the North. Descendants of Eucratides may have ruled on in the Indo-Greek kingdom.
Notes
See also
References
- "The Shape of Ancient Thought. Comparative studies in Greek and Indian Philosophies" by Thomas McEvilley (Allworth Press and the School of Visual Arts, 2002) ISBN 1581152035
- "The Oxford Illustrated History of Greece and the Hellenistic World" by John Boardman, Jasper Griffin, Oswyn Murray (Oxford University Press) ISBN 0192854380
- "The Diffusion of Classical Art in Antiquity" by John Boardman (Princeton University Press, 1994) ISBN 0691036802
