Indo Greek Culture and History

The Greeks, Kushans, Huns and Gurjars occupy a vast time space in the historical chronology of the Indian subcontinent but their contribution to the making of present day culture has not been analyzed enough in the academic institutions and intellectual circles of their respective demographic and geographic inhabitation, extension and influence.

“The Evidence of the Overstrikes for the Reconstruction of the History of the Indo-Greeks”
Translated from French into English: “L’apport des surfrappes à la reconstruction de l’histoire des Indo-Grecs”, Revue numismatique, 2008, p. 245-268.

The paper discusses the emergence of laiko tragoudi (popular song), the new genre of bouzouki music which succeded rebetiko after 1945 and examines the different styles of laiko that developed until 1967 The deciphering of the musical tendencies and styles takes into account all the different aspects of musical performances, as well as the position of musicians in respect to the major aesthetic, political and cultural issues that were involved in the experience of music and sheds some light not only on the persons, the works and the events of laiko music, but also on their complex associations with particular social sentiments and identities.

This book examines, in the light of numerous iconographies, the syncretism of three deities associated with the sun, the Indian Sūrya, the Greek Helios, and the Iranian Mithra. The Gandhāran statue of the Bodhisattva Siddhārtha in the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, wearing a headdress depicting the sun god in the guise of a Bodhisattva, performing the abhayamudrā ("the gesture of fearlessness") standing frontally in a chariot drawn by four horses, was the starting point for this study. This syncretic image of the Greek Helios and the Indian Sūrya with Buddhist overtones is a direct result of the cross-cultural nature of Gandharān art. The evolution of sun-god imagery in central India and in the Great Gandhāra owed much to the worship of the Indian Sūrya and the Greek Helios as creators of the universe and source of all life. Nor is it surprising that this remarkably syncretic image emerged in the Kuṣāṇ period as a Buddhist icon, perhaps even a Buddha. The earliest representations of the sun god in India, Central Asia, and China took place in a Buddhist context. Sūrya in the railing at the Mahābodhi Temple, at the Bhājā Vihāra cave, and in the lintel from the Huviška Vihāra at Jamalpur represent Sūrya synchronised with the Buddha's 'achievement of dispelling the darkness of ignorance.' Likewise, the Sun god dressed similarly to a Bodhisattva but in the guise of Indian Sūrya and Greek Helios in the headdress of the Bodhisattva Siddhārtha in the Royal Ontario Museum and the Sun god taking the form of Iranian Mithra at Bāmiyān also symbolise the Buddha who will 'blaze forth in this world to dispel the darkness of delusion.'

This bibliography is intended to complement Rachel Mairs’ The Archaeology of the Hellenistic Far East: A Survey (available on this site and at bactria.org). It is hoped that the current work will be of similar use in gathering material concerning the coins of the Hellenistic Far East together in a single place. Readers are asked to submit corrigenda or details of new publications to simon.glenn@me.com or as a message through Academia.

This dissertation argues that martial virtues and images of the soldier’s life represented an essential aspect of early Byzantine masculine ideology. It contends that in many of the visual and literary sources from the fourth to the seventh centuries CE, conceptualisations of the soldier’s life and the ideal manly life were often the same. By taking this stance, the dissertation challenges the view found in many recent studies on Late Roman masculinity that a Christian ideal of manliness based on extreme ascetic virtues and pacifism had superseded militarism and courage as the dominant component of hegemonic masculine ideology.

Historical sources concerning the Hellenistic kingdom in Bactria are scarce, and studies of them should be supported by the well-advanced numismatic analyses. This article discusses the chronology and genealogy of the Bactrian rulers. New suggestions include: the status of Pantaleon as a co-regent of Euthydemos II and the reconstruction of a possible pedigree for Pantaleon and Agathokles; that Eukratides I adopted the title Great King due to developments in Persia; that the ‘Demetrius, king of India’ mentioned by Justin could be identified with the Indian king Demetrios III, who might be redated to ca. 150 BCE; and an analysis of the relationship between Eukratides I and the last Bactrian kings. The so-called commemorative coins of Eukratides I are tentatively attributed to Heliokles I, as steward of Eukratides I.

Greco-Babylonian astral science had a wide dissemination throughout Eurasia during the first millennium CE. The traditional model proposed by Neugebauer, Pingree and Yano revealed how certain unique astronomical and astrological ideas spread unilaterally to India and China under different guises. This paper proposes an supplementary model where scientific notions exemplified in culturally hybrid astral texts such as the Yavanajātaka, Gārgīyajyotiṣa, Xiuyao jing 宿曜經, and Qiyao rangzai jue 七曜攘災決, are treated as conglomerates of smaller packages of knowledge rather than texts representing unique monolithic traditions. These bodies of foreign knowledge invariably interacted with the indigenous systems, in India and China where an astronomical tradition was already firmly established and a process of negotiation thus ensued. Different strategies were developed to absorb certain aspects of the foreign knowledge into the indigenous ones.

"Monograph on the Greek Kingdom of Bactria (sources, archaeology, history, fortune)

Reviews:

in English, http://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2010/2010-10-33.html

in Italian, http://histara.sorbonne.fr/cr.php?cr=1020&lang=fr

in French, F. Lefevre, Revue des études grecques, 124 (2011), 154-155."

(CC BY-NC-ND 4.0): This was my Final Degree Project in Universidad de Alicante (History). Written in Spanish, it contains the history of both kingdoms and the translation of their main sources in Spanish.
The satrapy of Bactria became independent from the Seleucid Empire in the
middle of the III century BC, creating the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom. Not only it expanded
through Central Asia, but it also surpassed Alexander in India, where after a civil war the
Indo-Greek Kingdom was founded in the conquered territories. The scarcity of references
to its history has relegated its study to numismatics and scholarly criticism of written and
epigraphic sources that we have collected and translated. From the chronological ordering
and the criticism of the available works, we have made a history about both realms from
the latest historiographical advances. Both kingdoms fell before nomadic invasions from
Central Asia and constituted particular hellenistic kingdoms that spread the Greek culture
from the banks of the Caspian to the coasts of the Indian subcontinent.

This article is conceived as an introduction to questions concerning the relationship between various versions of a Buddhist text known in its Pāli variant as Milindapañha, and in its Chinese versions as Nàxiān bǐqiū jīng (那先比丘經; T 1670 versions A and B). After a brief account of the conjectures about its redactor(s) and its public of the original Indian environment, the Chinese versions of the text will be dealt with in more detail, with particular attention to the Western reception and the problem related to the reconstruction of a possible archetype. The guidelines provided by Gérard Fussman will be taken into consideration, with some additional comments regarding the suggestion, in the case of the Chinese versions, of taking the Chinese audience into account. To confirm this point, a passage with an eristic dialogue, attested in both Pāli and in Chinese, will be analysed in detail to show how the Chinese translator(s) modified the text for the benefit of the public.

[SPANISH] Este ensayo está basado en la figura de Demetrio I de Bactria (Eutidémida) según la versión de W.W. Tarn en "The Greeks in Bactria and India". He de aclarar que el carácter de este escrito NO es académico ni didáctico, sino meramente divulgativo de una versión de la historia del Reino Grecobactriano y del Indogriego, la del Sr. Tarn.

https://www.degruyter.com/database/URBREL/entry/urbrel.17262513/html#Sec1

This paper aims to draw attention to the so-called burial associated with the foundation of the Indo-Greek city wall (ca. 130–115 BCE) at the urban site of Barikot in the Swat valley (NW Pakistan), the mountainous area of the ancient region of Gandhāra.

The so-called burial at Barikot is here tentatively interpreted as ritual deposit aiming at legitimising the new idea of ‘city’ implied in the foundation of the city wall. This conjecture is made on the ground of a reassessment of the archaeological evidence for the burial pit at Barikot and in light of the multi-layered social and religious background of the actors involved in the foundation of the Indo-Greek city wall.

Even after two millennia, the mysterious and premature death of Alexander the Great remains unresolved. It appears, however, that the Puranas, the ancient Indian Sanskrit texts, hold solemn secrets which could settle the archaic mystery surrounding Alexander’s premature death.A popular myth in the Puranas recounts the history of the Greek conquest of the Indus Valley and unveils the covert strategy that led to the rapid return march and the early death of Alexander. The Murder of Alexander the Great: Book 1—The Puranas details the evidence to illustrate that Alexander the Great appears in all the Indian epics and the Puranas as a mythological emperor.The second volume, The Murder of Alexander the Great: Book 2—The Secret War, reveals the secret Indian strategy that led to the submission and subsequent murder of Alexander. With fresh and firm evidence available from the Indian Sanskrit texts, the book solves the epic murder mystery and finally names the assassin and his secret weapon.

The Murder of Alexander the Great (in 2 books - The Puranas and The Secret war, published on Amazon books) unravels the hidden history from the Indian Sanskrit texts known as the Puranas. Legends in the Puranas details Alexander's disastrous conquest of India in 326 BC and provides evidence to show for the first time Alexander was portrayed as an Asura Emperor Mahabali, who was trying to conquer the three worlds, including the holy land of Aryavarta. A secret war waged by the Indians. led by Sages and Sadhus, finally diverted Alexander out of India. The Porus medallion, a commemorative coin issued by Alexander after his battle with King Porus of Punjab provides a clue to the disasters that crippled Alexander's global ambitions. www.murderofalexanderthegreat.com

Chinese translation of C. Lo Muzio, L’artigianato di lusso nel Nord-Ovest di epoca indo-greca, saka e partica: i “piattelli per cosmetici”, in Il Maestro di Saidu Sharif. Alle origini dell’arte del Gandhara, a cura di Pierfrancesco Callieri e Anna Filigenzi (Roma, Palazzo Brancaccio, 18 aprile – 21 luglio 2002), Museo Nazionale d’Arte Orientale-Istituto Italiano per l’Africa e l’Oriente, Roma,  pp. 77-83

This paper deals with the cultural and linguistic contacts that once existed between Greece and India, after the conquests of Alexander the Great in the regions of Bactria and the Indus Valley. I focus on the Kandahar Inscriptions, which are the Greek translations of some of the Aśoka-inscriptions, thus being a case study of the contacts between these two fundamental linguistic and cultural traditions. I will reconsider several features of these (bilingual) inscriptions, using, in particular, the recent achievements and rich apparatus of the academic fields of contact linguistics and sociolinguistics. Doing so, this paper will also contribute to the study of Indo-Greek cultural contact in general. I will argue that Indo-Greek contact during the Hellenistic Period, for the most time, needs to be interpreted as an adstratum relationship. Based on my analysis of the Middle Indo-Aryan borrowings in the Greek texts and some grammatical phenomena I will investigate, I will argue that the inscriptions are a good example of the sociolinguistic adstratum relationship between Greek and Middle Indo-Aryan.

For free download, see also http://www.asiainstitutetorino.it/indologica_vol_50_41.html

Citation: Schoubben, Niels (2017-2018). À la grecque comme à la grecque - The Greek Kandahar Inscriptions as a case study in Indo-Greek language contact during the Hellenistic Period. Indologica Taurinensia, 43–44, 79–118.

The following is a preview from a paper accepted for the monograph 'Hellenistic Timereckoning', edited by I.A. Ladynin and O.L Gabelko, to be published by the Russian State University for the Humanities. This excerpt formed part of a speech held at Oxford University in 2016, for the conference 'Contacts Between Hellenistic East and West', held at the Ertegun House and arranged by Mariana Castro.

Among the material remains of the past, coins constitute a significant corpus of evidence which survive for archaeologists, historians, and numismatists to study today. Coins are not just money: they are symbols of wealth and power, and sometimes bear complex political messages. When it comes to Central Asia history, and due to the near-total lack of written sources during the Hellenistic and Kushan periods (4th century BCE – 3rd century CE), archaeological and numismatical evidence is instrumental in studying and understanding the emergence and culmination of these societies.
Our presentation will thus focus on the evolution of the Graeco-Bactrian and Indo-Greek kingdoms as well as the Kushan Empire through their coinages, that is what kind of information coins bear and how they convey, in connection to the latest archaeological discoveries.
The conference was recorded and is online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOYPvaQeWOs

Olivieri, L.M. and Iori, E. 2020. “Early-historic Data from the 2016 Excavation Campaigns at the Urban Site of Barikot, Swat (Pakistan): A Shifting Perspective” in Greaves Andrade, L.R. and Hardy, A. (eds), Religions, Society, Trade and Kingship: Archaeology and Art in South Asia and along the Silk Road, 3500 BCE–5th Century CE, South Asian Archaeology and Art 2016. Dev, New Delhi: 79-103.