The Indo-Greek Kingdom. Yavanas of India.

Hello everyone, I am Simone and welcome to my channel. Today we are going to talk about an almost unknown aspect of Indian history and how a kingdom founded in a very unique way managed to create a syncretism between the Mediterranean and the Indian world. Few people know, but in the ancient world, the last country dominated by the Greeks to lose its independence was not in the Mediterranean region, but in the Indian Ocean. With the Roman conquest of Greece and present-day Turkey, which at the time was an almost entirely Greek land from a cultural point of view, which began in 146 BC and culminated in the early years of the current era, the only country to represent the cultural and political importance of the Hellenistic model in the Mediterranean region was Egypt. Up to 30 BC, it was ruled by the Macedonian dynasty of the Ptolemies, founded by one of Alexander the Great's closest friends, Ptolemaeus, and extinct with the suicide or perhaps murder of its last ruler, the queen Cleopatra, after the defeat of her kingdom suffered by the Romans. With the annexation of Egypt into the growing power of Rome, the last Greek state still independent, albeit briefly, was the Indo-Greek kingdom, originating from the secession from the Greco-Bactrian kingdom. This was another country on the edge of the then known world, at least from the Mediterranean point of view. The Greco-Bactrian kingdom dominated a rich territory that included large portions of present-day Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Iran, and began the invasion of Punjab and Pakistan in 180 BC. The history of the Greeks in these remote places was already long-standing at the time. In fact, when Alexander the Great himself reached the eastern borders of the Persian Empire in 325 BC, after defeating the Persian Empire's armies and annihilating its power, he found dozens of communities of Hellenic language and traditions. This was due to the practice common of the rulers of Persia, and later also used by the Romans, of transferring the survivors of the rebellions against their authority to opposite borders of their domains. Specifically, the Persian emperors such as Darius and Ceres, following the uprisings in Anatolia region, part of nowadays Turkey, during the wars that had opposed them to Sparta and Athens, had deported thousands of Greeks to Afghanistan for more than a century before the coming of Alexander. He then founded at least a dozen cities named after him, Alexander, showing little imagination and a lot of ego, which were populated by military settlers drawn from mainland Greece, Macedonia and Anatolia, increasing the weight of this ruling elite in the region. After Alexander's death, a series of wars broke out between his successors, and the area ended up in the sphere of influence of Seleucus, who founded an empire that took his name, the largest of all the states born following the fragmentation of Alexander's conquests. However, Seleucus and his successors spent most of their time fighting against Ptolemy's descendants in the nearest area. This allowed ambitious provincial governors, called satraps, east of the Seleucus domains, to proclaim their independence. Among all the states created after this fragmentation, the luckiest was the Greco-Bactrian kingdom, founded in the year around 250 BC. The kingdom, created by a secession, needless to say it was itself a victim of another secession, occurred in 180 BC, when a man called Apollodotus, who was a general or an illegitimate son of the king Demetrius I, launched in the same year an invasion of the Indian subcontinent, proclaiming himself king in India with the name of Apollodotus Soter, or the savior. He dominated a large area stretching from Punjab to modern Sindh and perhaps even Gujarat. Its prosperous state lasted for almost two centuries, generating a syncretic fusion between the Hindu, Buddhist and Greek traditions in coinage, writing, but also in religion. Some of these Greek Macedonian kings are said to have venerated and protected temples dedicated to Greek deities, as well as local ones, creating an interesting and unique syncretism with Buddhism. This confluence of ideas, cultures and philosophies had the highest expression in the Greco-Buddhist art of Gandhara. It originated from the artistic contributions that Greeks carried with them to this part of Asia, and although it originated at the time of the Indo-Greek kingdom, it developed further and outlived it, reaching the artistic maturity during the Kushan Empire between the first and fourth centuries of the current era. This style offers plenty of examples of Buddha and bodhisattvas represented in forms and ways in which the profound Hellenic artistic influence is noted, where Buddha, for example, is depicted with the characteristics of Apollo, lord of the sun, or the bodhisattvas take the forms of mythological heroes and semi-gods like Hercules. The Greek historian Strabo, who lived in the first century BC, quoting other authors of the time, stated that at the height of the kingdom of its greater ruler, Menager, the Greeks had become lords of the whole of India, probably just northern India, both western and eastern, up to Pataliputra, corresponding to the modern-day Patna in the state of Bihar. The Latin historians, still in the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD, defined this Basileio, the Greek word for kings, as Rex Indorum, a Latin expression meaning the kings of India. In any case, the outermost parts of this conquest were never stable and were almost immediately abandoned, also because the Indian lords of the region challenged the Greeks with determination for the control of every city and fortress. Local sources of the time speak of the invasions of the Yavana, a Sanskrit term used by the local inhabitants of the subcontinent to describe Greeks, originating probably from the word Ionians. References to the Yavanas are also present in ancient Indian literature. In the famous epic historical texts Mahabharata and in the Hindu text Vishnupurana, the Yavanas are mentioned in several occasions. In addition to literary references, archaeological finds in terms of inscriptions show that the influence of the Yavanas extended as far as the city of Mathura, in the heart of India, that was under their control for almost a century with continuous battles and peace between Hellenistic and Indian rulers. However, the civil and separatist wars remained a scourge for the Greek-speaking rulers, with Bactria and the Indo-Greek kingdom starting to fight with each other. Here, the greatest Basilius, or king Menadrus, who is said to have converted to the religion of Buddha, became really renowned and his figure was also present in the Buddhist literature with the name of Milinda. That represented the perfect synthesis between two civilizations, cultures and worlds. After him, 20 other kings held power in the region so far from the ancient homeland, while their neighbor and often enemy Greco-Bactrian kingdom collapsed under the pressure of different peoples, namely Scythians, Parthians and the Uezi, perhaps ancestors of the Huns, between the 130 and 125 BC. Squeezed between the latter in the west and the Indians in the south and east, the Indo-Greek kingdom gradually lost territories, power and prestige. Its last strip of land remained the eastern Punjab, ruled by Saturn II, which was conquered by the Indo-Scythian ruler Rajuvula around the year 10 BC, 20 years after the fall of Ptolemaic Egypt. In any case, the memory of that turbulent but very dynamic period also persists in the following centuries. In a document of maritime trade routes in the far east with the name of Periplus of the Red Sea, written between the 1st and the 2nd century AD, so long after the disappearance of this Indo-Greek kingdom, was reported that up to the present day ancient drachmas are common currency in Barigasa, bearing inscriptions in Greek letters, and the insignia of those who reigned after Alexander, Apollodotus and Menandros. Just to mention, Barigasa was the old name of the city of Baric, nowadays located in the Indian state of Gujarat. This attests that even in the Roman world there was still the awareness of the existence of a Greek kingdom, or at least the presence of Greek culture in India. The Romans then, especially in the imperial age, also had the opportunity to relate directly to India, as I reported in this other video about the two Roman settlements of Arikamedu and Museris, which I suggest you to watch. Okay friends, we reached the end of the video. I hope you enjoyed it. 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