Book review: Suchandra Ghosh,From the Oxus to the Indus: A Political and Cultural Study,c. 300 BCE to c.100 BCE

Despite the classical accounts of Alexander’s conquests in India, the idea of Greek rulers reigning and issuing coins in India was deemed such an unusual phenomenon that Theophil Bayer published a book on the subject as early as 1738. The next century saw large collections of these Greek coins becoming available, and James Prinsep, A. Cunningham, and P. Gardner did much to explore and analyse these. W.W. Tarn produced the first major synthesis in 1938 from a largely Hellenistic point of view. Later A.K. Narain sought to offer a different—more ‘Indian’—interpretation in his Indo-Greeks (1957). Discoveries of coins and some important inscriptions have continued since these works were published, and certain matters are now placed beyond dispute. For example, the discovery of Aśoka’s Greek and Aramaic edicts has shown that the Mauryas really held much of Afghanistan (contra Tarn), and the excavations at Ai Khanum near the Oxus have proved that Hellenism had really established a dominant position in the social and cultural life of this town in north Afghanistan, at such a great distance away from the Greek homeland. The time has arrived surely for a new synthesis to be attempted of the entire Greek presence in India.

Suchandra Ghosh’s volume of papers makes no claim to providing such a synthesis but touches on much of the evidence that would be needed for that effort. Dispersed over her eleven papers, along with a helpful introduction, I found almost everything I was looking for. The combined use by her of numismatic, archaeological, epigraphic and literary sources has illuminated our understanding of the times which was characterised by interactions, adaptations and cultural efflorescence. Imprints of Hellenism have been retrieved in the material remains at sites such as Ai Khanum, Kandahar, Charsadda, Barikot and Taxila. Whereas Ai Khanum with its gymnasium, theatre, an acropolis and a citadel represents a Greek city in Bactria, the fortification wall with jutting rectangular towers and a moat at Barikot and the inscriptions and pottery at Kandahar capture their Hellenistic connections. Local cultures and traditions coexisted in varying degrees across localities. The movement of ideas associated with technology is indicated in the presence of wine presses, among other technical skills and crafts, at Ai Khanum. It suggests the knowledge of the proper crops suitable for fermentation and also the fermentation process itself. Some problems are still not easy to solve: there are, for example, just too many Greek kings known from their coins to fit the limited area where they ruled within a period of two centuries. The author’s suggestion, made more than once, of treating many of these as sub-kings does not sound very convincing. But one feels at a loss for an alternative suggestion.

The author does succeed in convincing the reader of the varied aspects of Hellenic culture that were implanted in Afghanistan from religious mythology to art, along with Greek language and script, and is able to show how in time some Iranic and Indian elements, especially religious, were incorporated in that culture. The changing connotation of the term yavana, ranging from meaning a Greek to anyone coming from the West, as well as the yavanas’ actual presence at different locations in early Indian society, pointing to its vibrant inclusiveness and composite character, has been addressed in two successive chapters. The well-produced plates exhibiting different facets of Hellenistic influences add to the richness of the work.

One curious omission in her otherwise comprehensive survey is that of any discussion of how the higher Greek knowledge of astronomy (and astrology) was received in India and whether the Greek presence in Afghanistan facilitated that transmission. This question becomes especially important after the publication in 1978 by David Pingree of a critical edition of the Yavana-jåtaka in Sanskrit completed in Śaka 191 (ad 269–70). Its author Spujidhvaja says he based his text on a treatise on Greek horoscopy by Yavanaråja written in Śaka 71 (ad 149), presumably in Prakrit. It is to be further presumed that Yavanaråja either was translating a Greek text or had studied Greek astronomy, either of which could well have been carried out in Afghanistan, where Greek script (if not the Greek language) survived till the second century ad, a matter on which Ghosh’s book contains an informative essay (pp. 128–34).

One wishes Suchandra Ghosh’s excellent book had undergone a bit of careful copy-editing. It could have done with better proof-reading as well. On p. 32 read ‘Mazar-i Sharif’ for ‘Majr-i Sharif’; on p. 35 Antimachus is said to have ruled in ‘ce’ instead of ‘bce’; on p. 118, line 7, read not Plate ‘9.3’ but ‘9.2’; on p. 119, line 6, read ‘fed on human flesh’, not ‘fled on human flesh’; and on p. 122, line 4 from bottom, ‘Kashghar’ or ‘Kashgar’ not ‘Kashgarh’.

In these times of unreason, a competent work on Hellenism in India and its borderlands as the present one is particularly welcomed, for Greece after all was a great fountainhead of reason. The stiff price of the book may unfortunately limit its readership.