The Indo-Greeks

This is the fourth printing of The Indo-Greeks (the first three were published in 1957, 1962 and 1980). This revisit of the original 1957 text is supplemented by later contributions made by the author. It includes a chapter published in The Cambridge Ancient History, Vol. VIII and some articles which take into account the archaeological findings at Ai-Khanum and results of interactions between the Greeks and Indians. It also includes the handy and useful Coin-types of the Indo-Greek Kings (published already 3 times). There is a consolidated Bibliography at the end along with few maps and illustrative plates. This book deals with the remarkable story of the Graeco-Bactrain and Graeco-Indian peoples who interacted, and gradually became integrated, with the peoples and cultures of India. Until this book, the advanced study of this remarkable episode in the ancient history of Asia had been confined to European scholars. Narain is the first Asian historian to produce a monograph on the subject. This work, which has been translated into Hindi and Chinese, is based mainly on the coins which are their most important historical records, the classical literary sources in Sanskrit and Pali, Greek, Latin and Chinese, epigraphic documents and material evidence from archaeological excavations. This book gives a detailed and a reasonably accurate account of the vicissitudes of the Indo-Greek IKingdoms and clears up many misconceptions. The history of the Indo-Greeks is placed on a firm basis of chronology, and is seen against more than one background – the world of the heirs of Alexander in western Asia, that of the successors of the Mauryas in India and the local elements in Bactria at the end of the Achaemenids. The author feels that the recent discoveries at Ai-Khanum and other findings generally confirm and strengthen his conclusions about the Yavanas, that ‘they came, they saw, but India conquered’.