WHO FOUNDED THE INDO-GREEK ERA OF 186/5 B.C.E.?

摘要

The kingdom of Bactria (c. 250–130 B.C.E.) was an important Hellenistic state, basednon a substantial settlement of Greeks who inhabited the fertile valleys of northernnAfghanistan and apparently became well integrated with its original Iraniannpopulation. Due to the lack of written sources its history has however been obscurenand the chronology, at least after the third century B.C.E., reconstructed primarilynfrom coins. It is however generally agreed that soon after 200 B.C.E., the weakening ofnthe Indian Maurya Empire enabled the Bactrian Greeks led by Demetrius I (c.n200–185 B.C.E.), the son of Euthydemus I, to cross the Hindu Kush and makenconquests as far as Punjab and the Indian coast.1nAfter the death of Demetrius I, who left only a young heir Euthydemus II, annumber of kings emerged rapidly in Bactria and an independent kingdom wasnestablished outside of the Hindu Kush, in ancient ‘India’. Bactria collapsed aroundn130 B.C.E. under the combined pressure of nomad incursions and wars with thenParthians, while some Indo-Greeks – despite their isolation from the Hellenistic worldn– remained independent for more than another century. The most important Indo-nGreek2 king, Menander I (c. 155–130 B.C.E.), presumably even led a second wave ofnconquests and converted to Buddhism.nDemetrius I himself never issued any Indian coins. This does however not belie hisnIndian conquests: neither did Alexander the Great, and issuing coins is the task of annadministrator, not a conqueror. The Bactrian kings Pantaleon and Agathocles, bothnadjacent to Demetrius, were the first to issue bilingual coins in the Kabul valley andnGandhara, mostly bronzes meant for local circulation. Agathocles was challenged innBactria by Antimachus I: the datings are uncertain enough to allow for all of thesenkings to have ruled in 185 B.C.E.or closely afterwards.