‘Nysa in India’ & the

Source: here.

‘Nysa in India’ & the Related Narratives

Motivation

Alexander III of Macedon in his campaign of world conquest reached India in 327 BCE after attaining victory over the Persian Achaemenid Empire. It is reported by western classical sources that in India, the invaders stumbled on a city named Nysa and the inhabitants of the city told him that it was founded by none other than Dionysus. Alexander, we are told, was elated; he had found descendants of Greeks, in a far away land, conquered by the divine. As fascinating this tale is, a history enthusiast is intrigued to know more about the historicity of this tradition. Though, as Arrian had rightly said, even if there is doubt about credibility of such events, they do not seem to be incredible altogether, if one takes divine agency into account.¹ But as this tradition is related to Indian civilization and is intricately weaved with historical personalities; it becomes pertinent to understand the curious case of ‘Nysa in India’ in detail. This post is a humble attempt to do precisely that – to understand exactly what this city was, who were its people and were they really descendants of the Greeks? Or did such city actually exist? What are the views of various scholars regarding this issue?

Intricately related to the campaign, the personality of Alexander and the tradition of Nysa in India are other narratives. Some scholars were of the view that the tradition signifies actual events related to the settlements of pre-Alexandrian Greeks in the outlying provinces of India. Some scholars have discussed the strong possibility that there exists in today’s Pakistan i.e. the ancient Indian north-west, the descendants of those Greeks. Some disagree with the view but say that Alexander and his army left behind some of his people and settlements whose descendants can be seen in today’s communities. Such communities claim therefore, that they are Alexander’s or his generals’ descendants. Is there a pattern, a narrative that we are missing behind these traditions? This post will therefore also attempt in detail to understand this topic and its related narratives and try to determine the authenticity of the traditions and these the claims related to the question of Greek descent in the Indian sub-continent.

A relief carved on a 2nd century CE Roman sarcophagus depicting the legend of Dionysus and his triumphal march through the lands of India (Source)

As we are dealing with ancient history, we would have to keep in mind that even at the end of the post, there still might be many inconclusive arguments in front of us due to many inter and intra-contradictory sources, except where scientific studies have presented conclusive facts for example in the case of genetic studies, that will also be discussed in the post.

Before we consider the western classical sources which are our main body of information regarding the city of Nysa in India and its relation with Dionysus, it would be better to learn about when and how Indians learnt about the Greeks. The reason is because whatever we learn from the classical sources would have to be read and understood in the light of and corroboration with the Indian and Persian sources. Only then we might get a cohesive account of the events.

Eastern Sources

Ancient Persian Sources

We all have heard the word Yavana while reading Indian history. In ancient Indian literature and inscriptions the word Yavana in Sanskrit and its equivalent Yona in Pali were frequently used to refer to the westerners like the Romans, the Arabs etc. But it is an established fact that originally, the word was meant to describe the Greeks and was only later used in the general westerners’ context.² The word came in to Indian use when Achaemenid King Darius (r. 522-486 BCE) conquered significant portions of the ancient north west India – Gandhāra [Gadāra Old Persian] and also the Sind [Hi(n)du Old Persian]. The Achaemenid Empire now stretched on a huge landmass – “from the Saka who are living beyond Sogdia upto Kusha (Ethiopia) and from India up to Lydia”³ as an Achaemenid Inscription of Darius states.

It is in the epigraphic record of Darius that we first notice the use of the Old Persian term Yauna.⁴ Etymologically, the word Yavana/Yona is considered to be derived from the Greek word Iawn/Iaones i.e. the word for Ionians. The Ionian Greeks were members of that division of the Hellenic race which occupied Attica and northern coast of Peloponeus, who also established their colonies in Asia Minor, where a large district, Ionia was named after them.⁵

The Persians, even the Hebrews called the Ionian Greeks Yauna and Yawan respectively and the word was later applied to the Greeks in general. It is considered that Indians most probably took the word from the Persians when they first encountered Greeks on the borders of their country (Lal, 2004:1115), after the limits of the Achaemenid Empire reached within India. Therefore, it was due to Persia that the relations between India and the Greek world began.⁶ Even the respective names that these two civilizations had for each other were derivations from what the Achaemenids called them in Old Persian.[^7]

Being ruled by the Achaemenids since the time of the King Darius, the ancient north western Indians and the Ionian Greeks were in mutual contact. Indian merchants might have met with the Greek merchants in markets of the Persian Empire. We already know that Indian archers were employed in the Persian army by King Xerxes to fight against Greeks in the battle of Plataea in 479 BCE (Vasant, 1988: 331).

Ancient Indian Sources

Hindu

In ancient Indian literature, it is in Aṣtādhyāyi of Pāṇinī that the term related to the Greeks is first used. Pāṇini was an inhabitant of the ancient Indian north-west, in the vicinity of Taxila.⁷ In one if its sūtra, while teaching the use of an affix, Yavanāni is given as an example. From Kātyāyana’s varttikā, it is further deduced that the example given in Aṣtādhyāyi was meant to indicate the Yavanallipyam i.e. Yavana handwriting (Lal, 2004: 1115). The Indian grammarians gave their own understanding of this word’s etymology and considered Yavana as derived from the Sanskrit root Yu meaning to mix or to mingle and thus signified a mixed people.⁸ It is also considered that the word Yavana is a secondary Sanskritization of the Pali Yona.⁹ Even the Mahābhārata generally uses the term Yavana but Yauna is also encountered in the epic (Lal, 2004: 1115).

As Pāṇinī is variously dated between the periods of 6^(th) to 4^(th) century BCE, it provides us a wide range for when the Indians came in contacts with the Greeks, enough to learn about their script. Achaemenid King Cyrus had completed his conquest of the Lydian Empire that included Ionian territories by 542 BCE, but as mentioned above, it was in the period of Darius I in 515 BCE that Achaemenids conquered Indian lands comprising Gandhāra and the Indus region. Thus, it would be prudent to assume that at least in the commercial arenas of the vast Achaemenid Empire, the Indo-Greek contacts would have started to materialize from 5^(th) century BCE.

If we add to this the fact that Indian soldiers/mercenaries served in the army of Xerxes in the battle of Plataea in 479 BCE, it would have increased the knowledge of Indians about the Greeks because the soldiers who came back home would have certainly narrated about their adventures in the foreign lands. Along with this, if we consider the possibility from numismatic evidence and also of a Greek settlement in Bactria-Sogdiana, both of which will be dealt with shortly, we are now moving to the middle of the fifth century when the contacts between these two ancient civilizations would have increased.

It would also be safe to assume that information about the Yavana-s might have been known to the inhabitants in the north-west for some time before Pāṇinī for him to mention them in his magnum opus.

It is interesting to include in at this moment an important piece of evidence from a 8^(th) century CE Buddhist text called the Ārya Mañjuśrī Mūlakalpa, which mentions Pāṇinī as a friend of the Nanda Emperor Mahāpadma Nanda. This would make Pāṇinī flourishing a generation before Alexander i.e. between 366 – 338 BCE.[^11] Thus, his information on the Yavana-s was based on them either living in the Indian territories of the Persian Empire or in the Persian satrapy of Bactria-Sogdiana which still would have brought some Greeks quite close to India.

There is also a consistent theme in ancient Indian literature that characterizes Yavana-s and Kamboja-s as quite similar, so much so that the two tribes are very much mentioned side by side. Both of them are frequently mentioned wearing their hair short. Similar examples for Yavana-s and Kamboja-s are found in the Mahābhārata and also in the Purāṇic literature. While this suggests that Yavana-s and Kamboja-s lived near to each other, this information could also be assigned to a period later than Alexander’s and need not mean referring to the time before him. Though, these texts certainly had deep layers from the very ancient-archaic Indian tradition, yet it was still taking its current form by the start of the Common Era. Therefore, those contacts need not be earliest ones and Pāṇinī still remains the authority that provides us with an earliest window of period for first significant contacts between Indians and Yavana-s, which might have been increasing steadily since Darius’ victory in the north-west.

Buddhist

In Buddhist literature, one of the earliest references to Yavana-s occur in the Assalāyana Sutta of the Majjhima Nikāya that states the following discourse between Buddha and a young Brāhmaṇa named Assalāyana –

“What do you think about this Assalāyana? Have you heard that in the countries of the Yona (yonaraṭṭaṇa) and Kamboja (kambojaraṭṭaṇa) and other adjacent districts, there are only two castes, the master and the slave? And having been a master one becomes a slave; having been a slave one becomes a master?” – “Yes, I have heard this, Sir, in Yona and Kamboja…having been a slave, one becomes a master.”[^12]

It is interesting to note that even here the Yavana-s and Kamboja-s are mentioned together. Some scholars consider this as a proof of the Indian awareness about relatively egalitarian societies of the classical Greeks and therefore a proof of Greek settlement in India at the time of Buddha which was probably adjacent to the tribe of the Kamboja-s. However, there is a caveat – Pali texts even though forming the oldest layers of the Buddhist literature, were put to writing only in the 1st century BCE and they still kept on developing in the 2^(nd) century CE.¹³ Thus, there is a strong possibility that this information also belongs to later centuries rather than being contemporary to the Buddha i.e. in 6^(th) century BCE (Vassiliades, 2004: 135). Another argument that favours it being a later interpolation is the fact that the Yona state/settlement is not mentioned as being one of the sixteen mahājanapada-s in the earliest of the Buddhist and the Jain texts (Vassiliades, 2004: 135). The Buddhist text named Chullaniddesa (part of the the Niddesa Buddhist scriptures which are included in the Sutta Piṭaka’s Khuddaka Nikāya) is the first one to substitute Yona for Gāndhāra in the list of the sixteen mahājanapada-s (Vassiliades, 2004: 135) but this is also tentatively dated between 2^(nd) century BCE and 1^(st) century BCE. Hence, we again come to the conclusion that on the authority of Pāṇinī, we can consider late fifth and early fourth century BCE as an approximate earliest date when the Greeks might have made contacts with the Indians in the sub-continent which either were transitory contacts due to commerce or even a possibility of some sort of small settlement in the outlying regions could be entertained.

Aśokan Rock Edicts

The first known inscriptional-epigraphic evidence for the word Yona comes from Aśokan Rock edicts – specifically Rock Edict XIII from Shahbazgarhi in Peshawar of ancient north west India (now Pakistan). It mentions Antiochos (Aṅtiyako Yonarāja ) as the representative of the Yona kings and then goes on to mention Yona and Kamboja etc separately as the people in his own empire.[^14]

The Greek kings are named in the Rock Edict XIII makes clear that the dominion of the King Aśoka stretched as far as six hundred yojanas where “Yona Aṅtiyako Yonarāja Aṅtiyoko (Antiochos II Theos of Syria, 26-246 BCE) ruled and beyond that, where the other four kings-Tulamaye (Ptolemaios II Philadelphos of Egypt, 283-246 BCE), Aṅtekine (Antigonas Gonatas of Macedonia, 278-239 BCE), Makā (Magas of Cyrene, 300-250 BCE), and Alikyaṣudale (Alexander of Epiros or Corinth, 272-258 BCE) – ruled.”¹⁵

This Rock Edict XIII (also II) of king Aśoka also affirms that the Kamboja-s, Yavana-s etc were republican or kingless nations (“araja.visyavasi yonakambojesu..”) within the Mauryan empire. They also state that the Brāhmaṇs and Śramanas were ubiquitous in the empire except among the Yonas (Lal, 2004:1116) (Vassiliades, 2004: 136). The fifth and the ninth Rock Edicts also mention Yonas as king’s subjects devoted to the Dharma (Vassiliades, 2004:143).

These edicts while surely do give strong evidence about the presence of Yavana settlements within Maurya Empire and also their proximity to the Kamboja-s but these again do not prove their substantial existence in India before Alexander.

Bhandarkar tried to identify the Yonas mentioned in the Aśokan edict with Aria or Arachosia which were the two provinces ceded by Seleucuos to Chandragupta and which must have been inherited intact by Aśoka (Bhandarkar, 1921: 26). He suggested the possibility that they could have lived in a territory adjoining Gandhāra but outside India.¹⁰ He tried to corroborate this with the findings of a particular kind of coins from ancient Indian north-west and Bactria called the Athenian ‘owls’. He was of the view that these Yonas could be the descandants of the inhabitants of the Greek city Nysa of India mentioned in the western classical sources as founded by the Greek god Dionysus when he conquered this land.

As to the possibility that these Yonas in the Aśokan edicts could be the Greeks which Alexander left behind, he was of the view that as Alexander did not leave behind him any permanent settlements in or near India (Bhandarkar, 1921: 26), he only “left some Greek garrisons, certainly a province (Nysa) is not named after the race of garrisoned soldiers. It is only when a tribe or people comes in such terrific masses as to outnumber the original inhabitants that it gives its name to the province so occupied by them.”¹¹ He found even the idea of a mere garrison imparting the name of its race to the country where it is stationed, quite inadmissible, if not ludicrous. Consequently, he opined that these Yonas signified the Yavana settlements in India or Bactria before Alexander.

It certainly is a plausible scenario but the conclusion that Yavana settlements in the outlying provinces of India mentioned in the edicts was the same as Nysa mentioned in the classical sources is far from sure as it will be shown later in the post when we will discuss the characteristics of Nysa which clearly were not Greek but very much part of the Dardic Indo-Aryan/Indo-Iranian sphere. Hence, it would be prudent to treat the question of Nysa of India and the question of Greek settlements (pre or post Alexander) in India quite separately.

Western Classical Sources

Pre-Alexandrian Sources

Skylax

Now we move towards the classical sources for pre-Alexandrian information that relate actual contacts between Greek travelers/writers and Indians**.** As previously mentioned, Indo-Greek contacts happened through the agency of the Persian Empire; it is in the same vein that the first Greek – Skylax of Caryanda visited ancient Indian north-west on the orders of King Darius. Though some recent works do suggest the possibility that he could have visited much interior India and these recent studies suggest that the river mentioned in Skylax’s account could be either Ganga according to Panchenko or Yamuna as per Stoneman[^18] but they still remains only theories and north-west still remains the most probable region he visited. He along with the other pre-Alexandrian Greek writers who mentioned India like Ctesias, Hecataios, and Herodotus also limited their descriptions to the north-western regions of the Indian sub-continent up to the border of the River Indus.[^19] It is important to note that none of these early writers before the time of Alexander reported any Greek presence in the region. Though, it is likely that Skylax’s visit was not long enough that he exhausted even the mountain areas of the north-west and might have never known about Greek settlements in the region, it would be much more plausible to argue that there were no Yavana settlements in India at the time of his visit.

Herodotus

In fact, Herodotus, who was most probably writing on the authority of previous writers, in III, 102, refers to Indians that live near the town of Kaspátyros (=Kaspápyros) in the Paktyīké country, tentatively identified with Kusumpurā and Puṣkalāvatī, both of which were towns in ancient Gandhāra. About inhabitants of these regions, he says that their habits are very similar to those of the Bactrians, thus hinting towards a common culture that existed at least from Bactria to Gandhāra.[^20] On the continuity and similarity within the larger culture of the north-west of the subcontinent in the ancient times, Herodotus again provides us with some fascinating details. In III, 38, 4, he also assigns the practice of endocannibalism Kallatiai, a tribe in India, much like the tribe of Padaei (Tola & Dragonetti, 1986: 167). Herodotus also accredits this practice in case of other tribes as well like that of Iranian Massagetae and Issedones (Scythian people of Asian origin) who as per him lived southeast of Aral Sea in Central Asia. He also states that Kallatiai were very much shocked when Darius asked them whether they could burn their corpses.[^21]

Ctesias

There is also a tendency to ascribe the lighter complexion of inhabitants of the north-west to post-Neolithic, Iron Age admixture from Europe, particularly to Alexander and his army and thus suggesting that the people of the region were Greek descendants. Even if set aside the Indian sources which contradict this, there is also contradictory information in the western classical sources as well. Ctesias, another famous Greek who was in the court of Persian King Artaxerxes II Mnemon as his physician mentioned in his book Indiká that all Indians are not black and that some of them were also extremely white although fewer in number (Tola & Dragonetti, 1986: 175).

Post-Alexandrian Sources

Arrian

Coming to the sources for ‘Nysa in India,’ Arrian gives the most detailed description among others. He states that between the river of Kôphên (Kabul) and Indus (Sindhu), besides many other cities, there stood also the city of Nysa, which owed its foundation to Dionysus, and that Dionysus founded it when he conquered the Indians.[^22]

Interestingly, even Arrian treats the matter with skepticism. He makes a point to note his doubt about the Theban Dionysus who setting out from either Thebes or Lydia, marched with an entire army, passed through many warlike nations unknown to the Greeks at the time, but subjugated none of those people except the Indians (M’Crindle, 1896: 79).+++(4)+++ He however, closes the matter on the credibility of the story in his account with statement, mentioned earlier whose crux is that anything is possible when it comes to the matter of divine agency.[^23]

Arrian then relates that the name of the president of the Nysaians was Akouphis (it is considered that as the Greek 𝛷 represents bh of Sanskrit, hence the name might have been Akubhi)[^24] and with him came thirty deputies, his most eminent citizens and made a request to spare the city for sake of the god.

Akouphis then told Alexander, ‘‘The Nysaians entreat you, O King! to permit them to be still free and to be governed by their own laws from reverence towards Dionysos; for when Dionysos after conquering the Indian nation was returning to the shores of Greece he founded with his war-worn soldiers, who were also his bacchanals, this very city to be a memorial to posterity of his wanderings and his victory, just as you have founded yourself an Alexandreia near Kaukasos, and another Alexandreia in the land of the Egyptians, not to speak of many others, some of which you have already founded, while others will follow in the course of time, just as your achievements exceed in number those displayed by Dionysos. Now Dionysos called our city Nysa, and our land the Nysaian, after the name of his nurse Nysa; and he besides gave to the mountain which lies near the city the name of Mêros, because according to the legend he grew, before his birth, in the thigh of Zeus. And from his time forth we inhabit Nysa as a free city, and are governed by our own laws, and are a well-ordered community. But that Dionysos was our founder, take this as a‘proof, that ivy which’ grows nowhere else in the land of the Indians, grows with us.”[^25]

The excerpts suggest that the inhabitants of the city were free; that they had cavalry and that governance was in the hands of aristocrats (Narain, 1957: 2). Alexander then asked Akouphis to provide him with 300 of their horsemen and also best of their men from the governing body of 300 members. Interestingly, to this also Akouphis requested that instead of taking hundred of their best men, he should take twice as number of the worst men and also take 300 horsemen or even more if he desired. This he asked “so that on your (Alexander’s) returning hither you may find the city as well governed as it is now” (M’Crindle, 1896: 81). This request was also granted by Alexander with few conditions.

Arrian then explains how Alexander went to the Mount Mêros where they found ivy, how the Macedonians in the party weaved themselves some ivy chaplets and crowned themselves with them, while chanting hymns to Dionysus and invoking the god by different names (M’Crindle, 1896: 81-82). Alexander then offered a sacrifice to the god Dionysus and the Macedonians raised in the god’s honour, shouts of Evoi (one of the Roman names for Dionysus), and reveled like Bacchanals celebrating their orgies.[^26]

Curtius

Curtius, on the other hand, doesn’t mention any straightaway meeting between Alexander and the Nysaeans. In fact, he mentions that during the course of his march, Alexander first encamped near the city. Due to the increasing cold of the night, when campers lit the fire and fed it with logs of wood, they might have taken slabs from the wooden coffins or the fire somehow spread to the wooden coffins which were made of old cedar wood but the result was it engulfed all of the tombs. A clamour ensued and this alerted the inhabitants of Nysa after which Alexander instituted a close blockade of the city. Between being unsure of whether to surrender or to pursue fighting, Nysaeans surrendered in the end. This is when they told Alexander that the city was founded by Father Bacchus.[^27] Rests of these details are more or less the same as that by Arrian. While Curtius mentions that Alexander ascended the mountain Meros with his whole army, Philostratos (II. 4) says that Alexander did not ascend the mountain but, inspite of being anxious to do so, he contented himself with offering prayers and sacrifices at the base.[^28]

The mention of wooden tombs/coffins in Curtius’ account is important because this frequently becomes the basis on which some identify Nysa of India and their descendants in the Indian sub-continent, a topic that will be discussed shortly.

Identifying Nysa

In Gandhara, Ptolemy mentions a town named Nagara (Ancient Greek: Νάγαρα) which has a Greek name, ‘also Dionysopolis’ (ἡ καὶ Διονυσόπολις) and which certainly contained a Greek settlement. It has been identified with Nagarahara which was situated between the Kabul River and the Indus, in present-day Afghanistan (Tarn, 1922: 168, 244). This place was also called Udyānapura, i.e. “ the city of gardens,” which the Greeks from some resemblance in the sound translated it as Dionysopolis, a compound meaning “ the city of Dionysos.”[^29] Today, it can be identified with Nagara Ghundi, a site, about 4km west of Jalalabad. There also had been suggestions to identify this Nagara-Dionysopolis with Nysa. This was apparently confirmed by a mountain called Mar – Koh {i.e, snake-hill) at some distance eastward from this site, on the opposite bank of the river, which, “if Nysa be Nagara, may be regarded as the Mount Meros which lay near it, and was ascended by Alexander…” (M’Crindle, 1896: 338). But Ptolemy was writing in 2^(nd) century CE and the town of Dionysopolis was most likely a later settlement that flourished after the fall of the Graeco-Bactrian cities of Ay-Khanoum and Takht-i-Sangin. Also Tarn believed that the two locations (Nagara and Nysa) were actually far away from each other.[^30]

Settlement of Branchidae in Sogdiana: A Possibility?

Was Nysa the only major settlement related to us by the western classical sources? The Indian sources, as mentioned above do suggest strong possibility that Indians and Greeks came in contact after the Achaemenid victory of Darius in India and there might have been some sort of Greek presence in the country by the time of Pāṇini. But we also saw that the Greeks are conspicuous by their absence in the description of India by Skylax and other earlier writers mentioned above, so are we in a position to speculate another location for possible Greek settlement outside India but near it? There actually is some information regarding a pre-Alexandrian settlement in Bactria-Sogdiana. The proximity of these regions will put them in ideal place to be in contact with the Indians, especially through commerce and also close enough that Indians and Greeks might have actually met each other periodically. That might also explain why Pāṇini knew about them and their script. After all, he was born and lived in the vicinity of Takṣaśilā (Taxila) which apart from being a famous city for its university, it was also a very important economic centre through which a lot of trade happened between India and Central Asia, the famous Silk route of the later times.

The information is about a settlement of Branchidae in Sogdiana. The Branchidae claimed to be sacred gens, descending from Branches, the traditional founder of the temple of Apollo near Miletus in Ionia. Their forefathers had, according to a tradition, “yielded up the treasure of their temple to Xerxes; this affair brought so much odium on them that they went and retired with Xerxes into the interior of Asia.”[^31]

Alexander one day in 329 BCE, after his victory on the Achaemenids and before his invasion of India, left Bactria with his army, marched through the desert, crossed the Oxus, and while going north towards Samarkand, stumbled upon something unexpected. As told by Curtius (7. 5. 28–35), he came upon a town, inhabited by Branchidaea who as told above, had migrated earlier from Miletus by order of Xerxes. The possibility of situation of Branchidae town could be between Balkh and Samarkand.[^32] The rest of this intriguing account quoted by Panchenko in his paper can be read in this following excerpt:

“They had not ceased to follow the customs of their native land, but they were already bilingual, having gradually degenerated from their original language through the influence of a foreign tongue. Therefore they received Alexander with great joy and surrendered their city and themselves. He ordered the Milesians who were serving with him to be called together. They cherished hatred of long standing against the race of the Branchidae. Therefore the king allowed to those who had been betrayed free discretion as to the Branchidae, whether they preferred to remember the injury or their common origin. Then, since their opinions varied, he made known to them that he himself would consider what was the best to be done.

On the following day when the Branchidae met him, he ordered them to come along with him, and when they reached the city, he himself entered the gate with a light-armed company; the phalanx he ordered to surround the walls of the town and at a given signal to pillage the city, which was a haunt of traitors, and to kill the inhabitants to a man. The unarmed wretches were butchered everywhere, and the cruelty could not be checked either by community of language or by the draped olive branches and prayers of the suppliants. At last, in order that the walls might be thrown down, their foundations were undermined, so that no vestige of the city might survive.

As for their woods also and their sacred groves, they not only cut them down, but even pulled out the stumps, to the end that, since even the roots were burned out, nothing but a desert waste and sterile ground might be left.+++(4)+++ If this had been designed against the actual authors of the treason, it would seem to have been a just vengeance and not cruelty; as it was, their descendants expiated the guilt of their forefathers, although they themselves had never seen Miletus, and so could not have betrayed it to Xerxes (transl. by John C. Rolfe in the Loeb series).”[^33]

This tale is narrated not just by Curtius but other western classical sources also. Strabo says –

“they say that Xerxes founded in this area (Bactria-Sogdiana) the city of the Branchidae, who set off willingly with him from their homeland, because they handed over the possessions and the treasures of the god at Didyma” (Hammond, 1998: 341).

Diodorus states:

“How the Branchidae having been settled long ago by the Persians at the extremity of their kingdom, were destroyed by Alexander as traitors of the Greeks.”

Hammond also considers their situation in Sogdiana, the north-easternmost province of the Persian Empire.[^34]

As to why Alexander perpetrated the massacre, Hammond explains his view that Alexander had particularly close ties with Apollo, and, when he asked the opinion of the Milesians in his army on how he should treat the Branchidae, he found them divided in their views. So, Alexander took a personal decision and exacted retribution for the sins (against Apollo and against Greeks) of the past generation of Branchidae. All males were executed, others enslaved and the city was completely destroyed (Hammond, 1998: 344). Narain specially cites an authority like Herodotus and states that the Greeks of the city states in the Asia Minor were sometimes threatened by the Persians with exile to the far eastern portions of the Achaemenid Empire and there are examples of them being settles there.[^35] In fact regarding the possibility of Persians deporting people, there are other examples – we do find mention of deportation of 780 Eretrians in 490 BCE (Linonel, 2005: 121).

As the recovery of Miletus suggests, the number of killed and enslaved there was rather modest, therefore a speculation can be made about the strength of the deportees to Sogdiana – the number could have been around 1000³⁶ and these deportees might have been given land in those areas to settle there and cultivate the land.

Some scholars believe that the entire story about the existence and the subsequent massacre of the Branchidae is not real but Panchenko disagrees and believes that neither the meeting itself nor the subsequent massacre was invented (Panchenko, 2002: 245). He also cites references for suggesting the possibility that Branchidae might have chosen the exile out of their own insecurity. Therefore, Xerxes accepted them as his refugees and gave them a frontier area as a settlement. So, the story of Branchidae’s exile is plausible.[^37]

The fact that a massacre of a Greek population has actually been mentioned by multiple sources, despite the strong possibility of being an extremely unpopular move, notwithstanding the stated goal of revenge for the sins of their previous generations, the tone of the events suggest that they actually happened.+++(4)+++ Panchenko raises important questions in this regard like why Alexander, on finding Greeks after such a long time in the faraway lands of Central Asia and of all options possible, would decide to massacre them. Panchenko believes that in the mention of cutting of the sacred groves by Curtius, explained above, lies the explanation of the tragedy. It would again be better to quote him to understand the plausibility of the event:

“Since Curtius’ account implies that the city of the Branchidae was located not far from the place of crossing, it is even possible that Alexander reached the city while a part of his army had yet to cross the river; then the wood cut at the sacred grove was immediately used to build rafts. Whatever the particular purpose, cutting a sacred grove was a sacrilege; it could be hardly committed without a pressing need. For the same reason it required a very strong justification.

The whole career of Alexander shows that he was very conscious of what is nowadays called public relations. By this I mean not only his concern for posterity. Starting a campaign in a vaguely known and hostile country by offending a mighty god was fraught with creating panic among the soldiers as soon as they would face any misfortune. The only way of justifying the sacrilegious deed was to turn it into the avenging of another sacrilegious deed – hierosylia (Strab. 14. 1. 5). An additional charge – betrayal of the Greek cause – was not strictly pertinent, but emotionally was very efficient.”[^38]

Another evidence for the historicity of the event can be seen in the mention by the ancient writers of setting up of altars to Apollo Didymaeus by Demodamas, a general of Seleucus and Antiochus after his successes in the area (Panchenko, 2002: 248), probably to atone for the massacre perpetrated by Alexander. This story also shows the sheer contrast between the treatment meted out to the Branchidae on one hand and Nysa in India on the other. The reasons of it could be very interesting to consider, as we would shortly in this post.

Therefore, a Milesian colony with a number of educated people from the upper stratum did exist during the century and a half (from 479 till 329 BC) almost next door to north-western India and practically on the future Silk Road.[^39] When we consider the facts discussed above that Pāṇini being a scholar from Taxila in Gandhāra knew about Yavana-s and their script, in my opinion, we are then in a position to speculate that he might have known about this Yavana settlement in Bactria-Sogdiana. It was related before in the account of Curtius that these Greeks had already forgot some of their language and had become bilingual which also means that they remembered their language, albeit in a diluted form. Therefore, the possibility that the Yavana that Pāṇini knew about were actually situated in Bactria-Sogidana is as strong as (may be even more) the possibility of Yavanas being settled in India.

Numismatics: The Athenian ‘Owls’

Until now, we were dealing with literary sources regarding the pre-Alexandrian evidence for Greek settlements in India were concerned but know we move on to numismatic evidence called the Athenian ‘owls’ mentioned before. These coins are usually cited in favour of the presence of Greeks in India and Central Asia before Alexander. These are a special kind of coins called the Athenian ‘owls’ that have been found in India and Central Asia (particularly around Oxus). What were these Athenian ‘owls’ and how are there findings related to the argument for presence of pre-Alexandrian Greeks in India, one might ask?

In the 6^(th) century BCE tyrant Peisistratos (560-527 BCE) introduced in Athens a new kind of coinage – the Tetradrachm which then was made a Stater or the standard coin.[^40] It was the largest Greek silver coin at the time. At first due to commercial reasons and then commercial as well as the political reasons beacause of the Achaemenid victory over Ionia in Asia Minor, these coins found wider appeal and they were imitated widely, even in Arabia and India (Davis, 1960: 71). The earliest imitations of these Athenian ‘owls’ were made in Egypt and in southern Levant.[^41] These coins, the original ‘owls’ (drachm, didrachm and tetradrachm) were stamped with the head of Athena on obverse and her sacred bird, the owl (symbol of knowledge and wisdom) on reverse with a usual inscription of ΑΘΕ – an abbreviation (alpha, theta, epsilon) of ΑΘΗΝΑΙΩΝ, which may be translated as “of the Athenians”.

P. Gardner in his paper On Some Coins of Syria and Bactria in 1880 published the findings of some imitations of these Athenian ‘owls’ with the head of Athena on the obverse and an owl on reverse.[^42] These coins were part of what was called the Oxus hoard. Rapson was also of the view that these Athenian ‘owls’ found their way to the East in the course of commerce. It so happened that for about a century before 322 BCE, the Athenian mint was closed and the supply from it grew less (Rapson, 1898: 3). So, attempts were made to faithfully imitate and produce the originals in northern India as in other place in the Achaemenid Empire to complete the supply.[^43]

Imitations of the Athenian ‘Owls’: Attic weight standard; Obverse – Head of Athena & Reverse – Her Symbol Owl, minted in either Bactria or Ancient Indian North-West. (Source)

Imitations of the Athenian ‘Owls’: Indian weight standard, 1. Diadrachms; 2. Drachm; Obverse – Head of Athena & Reverse – Her Symbol Owl, minted in either Bactria or Ancient Indian North-West. (Source)

It provided confirmation that coins from the Greek mainland had been making their way east since fourth century BCE (Jansari, 2018: 77). This hoard was buried in c.390-380 BC and had coins from Athens and Aegina, and also from the Greek cities in Asia Minor, including Soli and Phaselis (Jansari, 2018: 77) along with the imitations of the original ‘owls’. On these Athenian owls’ imitations, the ΑΘΕ was sometimes replaced by AIΓ(Whitehead, 1943). Some scholars did consider the possibility that such imitations could be post-Alexandrian, yet, was considered more likely that these were pre-Alexandrian.[^44] Though, as per Jansari, the tradition of actually minting the imitations spread to Babylonia and Bactria after Alexander’s conquests, not before him following important eastern trade routes (Jansari, 2018: 76).

On the basis of the findings of these Athenian ‘owls’, Bhandarkar tried to prove the presence of Greeks in some outlying province of India and connected their findings with the Nysa of India mentioned in classical sources and also the Yona-s in the Aśokan edicts. Bhandarkar considered the absence of any countermarks on some of the Athenian ‘owls’ to be an evidence that suggested the coins as native to some outlying district of India that might have been peopled by Yavanas or Greeks (Bhandarkar, 1921: 29). Narain also speculated that the Athenian ‘owls’ and other coins of the Greek cities might have been brought there both by traders and settlers.[^45]

In 1933, another discovery was made of a hoard of coins from Kabul called the Chaman Hazouri Hoard or the Kabul Hoard which included many bent-bar coins, a kind of punch marked coins from the north west of the sub-continent. And, along these were found many Greek coins and some local imitations of the Greek coins (Goyal, 1999: 145) i.e. the Athenian ‘owls’. Recent opinions consider the date for the striking of the imitations to 360s BCE.[^46] An Iranian imitation of an Athenian owl was among the latest of the group and based on the date of that coin of about 380 BCE, the date of the hoard was therefore fixed around that time. This also provided confirmation that in these regions, Greek coins were in circulation well before the arrival of Alexander (Bopearachchi, 2000: 310) and even the imitations were minted in the south of the Hindu Kush.

It was earlier suggested by some scholars like Narain that some of the coins (from the Oxus Hoard) might have been struck by the Greeks settled in Central Asian territories of the Achaemenid Empire before Alexander’s arrival. But the earliest coins struck in Bactria including the imitation of the Athenian owls, according to Bopea did not appear before 305 BCE (Bopearachchi, 2000: 314) during the re-conquest of the Central Asian satrapies by Seleucos I (306-305 BCE) i.e. just before the striking of proper Seleucid coinage in Bactria.**⁴⁷ **Therefore, the Achaemenid royal coins and the coins of the Greek cities found from Bactria-Sogdiana region were mostly imports from western regions (Bopearachchi, 2000: 309). The reason suggested is that while the territories of the erstwhile Achaemenid empire south of the Hindu Kush had a well developed monetary system, the regions north of the Hindu Kush did not start striking coins before the last decade of the 4^(th) century BCE.[^48]

The fact that relatively lesser number of the low denomination coins as oppose to the high denomination tetradrachms are found in the north of Hindu Kush regions, this supports the suggestion that trade in these areas was still predominately barter and coins were only used for important commercial exchanges (Bopearachchi, 2000: 324). In contrast to this, high amount of low denomination coins in south of the Hindu Kush explains the strong monetized economy of the area. This also helps us to understand the reason for such a late date for coin striking in regions north of the Hindu Kush as oppose to the south of the Hindu Kush.

Another hoard called the Shaikhan Dehri hoard found in 2007, in the ancient city of Puśkalāvati from ancient north-west India (current Pakistan), also contained many local struck ‘bent bars’ and some new type of coins. It however, also contained one Athenian ‘owl’, a tetradrachm minted in Athens with the usual “ΑΘΕ” inscription being off-flan (Bopearachchi, 2017: 18). The possible date for this coin is between 510-485 BCE and thus, the Shaikhan Dehri hoard was confirmed to be much older than the Kabul hoard.

Athens coin (Circa 500/490-485 BCE) discovered in Pushkalavati. This coin is the earliest known example of its type to be found so far east. (Source – WikiMedia Commons)

So, what exactly does this numismatic evidence actually signifies? The presence of pre-Alexandrian Greeks in India is therefore not a question but the question is their presence before Alexander, in such a large numbers enough for it to be called a settlement in the country. And can we connect it to the city of Nysa mentioned by western classical sources? While it has been argued that this suggests Greek settlements in India, it is still, in my opinion insufficient evidence. What it does give ample proof of is that commercial relations between India-Central Asia (Bactria-Sogdiana) and the Greek world were strong.

The Indian side of the Hindu Kush, as already mentioned above had well established practice of minting coins, unlike the north of the Hindu Kush. Therefore, when the supply of the Athenian ‘owls’ decreased, with repercussions for trade in the Persian markets, their imitations were made by the Indian potentates (as was done at various places in the Achaemenid Empire), with a probability of some guidance from some Greeks in the Persian Empire or maybe they were a result of purely indigenous attempts to replicate the designs of the original Athenian owls’ that were circulating due to commerce in the Indian north-west and Central Asia.

One might now ask, if it has been suggested by some studies mentioned above that the trade in Central Asia was not enough for them to mint these imitations; that minting proper was only started in the region after Seleucus I and the earlier imitations are mostly examples of the coins that reached Bactria-Sogdiana due to commerce, would that not contradict the conclusion reached before in this post that there was a settlement of Branchidae in Sogdiana? And why could they not mint these imitations? This, in my opinion, as the current evidence stands, could be because the settlement of Branchidae was a migratory one and therefore, much less connected with the resources, the markets of rich Asia Minor; they might not have the resources to mint such coins. But this is only a speculation and the results reached could change with new archaeological/numismatic finds and studies.

….

Alexander & his Ambitions of Divinity

Keeping these conclusions in mind, it is fascinating to think that the ‘Nysa in India’ found such exhilarating appeal in the western classical culture. Why was that? Why did Alexander on some mere similarities believe this Dionysus connection with such ease? Why was he trying to provide credence to an existing tradition? Was it for his benefit? If yes, then what did he hope to achieve by doing that and did he actually achieve his goals? In this last section of the post, we again come to the same sources that started these claims of a city of Nysa, established by Dionysus in India and we would try to understand Alexander’s motives.

For this we would have to understand what Alexander’s lineage was. He was considered to be a descendant of Heracles through his father. He was a member of the Argead royal house of Macedon, founded by Caranus, was descended from the Temenids of Argos themselves descended from Heracles (Diod. 17.4.1) (Leitch, 2018: 110). And through his mother, he was considered a descendant of Achilles. His origins played an important role in many of his decisions later in his campaigns. When we understand the importance of Heracles and the related traditions, we would understand why outdoing Dionysus by surpassing his conquests became so important for Alexander, particularly later in the Indian campaign. To analyze his motivation, his goals and his beliefs, not just in the divine legends but ultimately in his own divinity, the following incidents and events help us a lot. And then only we can comprehend the importance of the legend of Nysa in India for him. In this regard, Alexander’s efficient use of what we might call kinship diplomacy would be a good place to start.

Thessalian League

From the accounts of Diodorus (Diod. 17.4.1) and Justin (Justin 11.3.1), it is clear that Alexander used kinship diplomacy as early as in case of the Thessalian League[^82] and this was before the start of his campaign in Asia. One of the reasons was to make his kingship “more palatable” and to increase his power in the Hellenistic world (Leitch, 2018: 110).

Troy

Another example is from Troy – “Alexander employed kinship diplomacy with the Trojans by using a connection with them through Andromache, from whom he was descended through his mother.”[^83]

There is no doubt that Alexander was an exceptional leader to his army and understood the importance of morale of the forces. This can be seen when Alexander offered a sacrifice to, Priam, the king of Troy during the Trojan War (Leitch, 2018: 111). Historians believe that Alexander did this in order to appease Priam so as not to jeopardize the Macedonian campaign and there is also the possibility that it was done to quell the fears of his men.[^84] In the subsequent paragraphs of the post, we will see how Alexander tried to use the legend of Nysa in India as a morale boost for his army.

Nysa

In fact, according to Curtius, as early as the battle of Issus where Alexander would defeat Darius for the first time, he encouraged his men by promising them that they would ‘one day traverse the bounds set by Hercules and Liber (Dionysus) to subdue not only the Persians but all the races of the earth.’ (Stoneman, 2019: 84). The difference between the manner in which Alexander treated the two ancient cities of Soli and Mallus, in Cilicia near Issus is also helpful to understand his mindset. Soli was fined for supporting the Persian cause while in the case of Mallus, he remitted the tribute which the city paid to Darius because as per Arrian – “Mallus was a colony of Argos and he himself claimed to be descended from the Argive Heracleidae”,**⁸⁵ **therefore Mallus was given the advantage of being Heraclid origin.

Other examples

Similar use of kinship with the gods reduces in number when Alexander entered the non-Greek world. Yes there were some important incidents in Tyre and Egypt where the gods Melkart and Ammon were respectively identified with Herakles and Zeus by the Greeks (Leitch, 2018: 111) but kinship diplomacy was very limited. Another example is of his Persian campaign where despite the believed Persian connection due to Perseus, a descendant of Herakles, the kinship diplomacy was not employed. As these other ancient civilizations worshipped their own gods, the use of kinship diplomacy despite the connections believed by the Greeks would not have been fruitful (Leitch, 2018: 111-112).

Then we see a major shift in his decision of the dismissal of the troops of the League of Corinth.

“By dismissing these troops, Alexander acknowledged that he had accomplished what he set out to do, at least in the eyes of the League of Corinth, and anything from here on out was simply unnecessary. Alexander was doing this for himself now and that’s why kinship myth makes reappearance in this campaign and is different from before.” **⁸⁶ **

From now on, he was on the path to achieve his personal goals of world conquest and not strategic political gains.

Gordian Knot

The episode involving the Gordian Knot even back in 333 BCE clearly showed that he knew how to use legends for his own ends and the episode had added much to his personal mystique since the gods, it seemed, were ordaining him as the conqueror of Asia (Gilley & Worthington, 2010: 194).

Egypt

The incident in Egypt is a good example where we clearly see a precedent for the germination of Alexander’s ambitions for divinity. While at Siwah in Egypt, Alexander visited the oracular site of Zeus Ammon. There, he was met by the priest, “but he misinterpreted (perhaps intentionally) the priest’s greeting paidion (‘o boy’) for pai dios (‘o son of Zeus’). Although much of the visit is a mystery, since Alexander met the priest and heard the god’s responses to his questions in private, the sources reveal a change in Alexander for he now openly called himself the son of Zeus… Once again, the king manipulated a situation for his own ends.”[^87] This visit to Siwah itself has to be seen in the light of the possibility that it was an attempt to emulate Perseus and Heracles. (Gilley & Worthington, 2010: 195).

Anaxarchus

Later, an incident with the philosopher Anaxarchus might have even given him the idea that Alexander himself should be a god like Herakles. In 328 BCE, Arrian narrates that the philosopher made a speech proposing that

‘it would be far more just to reckon Alexander a god than Dionysus and Heracles, not so much because of the magnitude of Alexander’s achievements, but also because Dionysus was a Theban, and had no connection with Macedon, and Heracles an Argive, also unconnected with Macedon, except for Alexander’s family, for he was descended from Heracles’. Callisthenes responded to it by his own argument that ‘even Heracles did not receive divine honours from the Greeks in his own lifetime, nor even after his death till the god of Delphi gave his sanction to honouring him as a god’.

In short, Alexander should wait until he was dead if he wanted to be a god (Stoneman, 2019: 84). As Heracles had an intimate connection to the Macedonian royal house, his legends had deep imprint on Alexander. The exceptional achievements of the hero who had become god provided him with a model. Already Philip had claimed land conquered by Heracles.[^88]

But, Alexander was now attempting to surpass his divine ancestor. The motive of stating these incidents is that Alexander had now started to seriously consider and believe in his own divinity.

Proskynesis

His first attempt to actually put his belief in practice came with an incident in Bactria in 327 BCE, before his march on India. Here, he attempted to introduce the Asian practice of proskynesis at his court in which an individual either prostrated himself before the king or bowed and blew the king a kiss but the move backfired. For the Greeks however, the gesture was blasphemous since it appeared to be an act of prostration to the gods, and even the posture was not acceptable as noted by some scholars. We wouldn’t be wrong to assume that Alexander definitely would have known the risk he was taking by such decision. He must have known how his men would critically react to such a religiously charged custom. Yet, he took the risk. The result was on the expected lines. The attempt was a failure in the end, because his court historian, Callisthenes, “refused to participate, and the other men followed suit” (Gilley & Worthington, 2010: 195).

Surpassing heroic deeds

We can see how deeds of Herakles and surpassing them would have then become important for Alexander. Even though, Alexander himself might have believed in his divinity but the fellow Greeks and Macedonians were not going to so easily. We have to understand that Alexander’s campaigns of 327 BCE at Bactra, and then in India (327-325 BCE) were not a military necessity: no Indian ruler at that time threatened his conquests of either Iran or Central Asia (Olbrycht, 2010: 360). Keeping these events in mind, again we can see ambitions of something grander. Alexander, a king was in the need of something more persuasive for him to become a god. Could India provide him with an opportunity to surpass Heracles and Dionysus? It could and it did. That’s why for Alexander, campaign in India has to be seen in the context of not just a campaign of a world conqueror but a campaign in which if he, a king emerged victorious, a god would be born.

Heracles concquests

Not only the legends of Dionysus, which have been the main concern of the post but legends of Heracles and Alexander’s attempt in going ahead than the god himself by conquering India came into play when as per Curtius, claims of being descendants of the Hercules’(Heracles’) army were made by the tribe of Sibi of India. Diodorus also mentions on the same lines when he relates this story vis-à-vis India –

“It is said that Heracles of old thought to lay siege to this ‘rock’ (Rock Aornos) but refrained because of the occurrence of certain sharp earthquake shocks and other divine signs, and this made Alexander even more eager to capture the stronghold when he heard it, and so to rival the god’s reputation” (Diod. 17.85.2).”[^89]

This Aornos was convincingly identified by Aurel Stein with Pir-Sar (Stoneman, 2019: 86). In this story, we again notice the consistent theme of Alexander and his ambition to ‘rival’ the gods.

However, it is fascinating to note that unlike Dionysus no previous classical writer mentions exploits of Heracles east of the Caucasus before Alexander’s campaign in India. To provide a solution for this problem, there was a deliberate attempt on part of Alexander to identify the Hindu Kush as the Caucasus (the Indian Caucasus) and thus this assisted the extension of his adventures to this region.[^90] Arrian also mentions how Macedonians transferred the name of Mount Kaukasos from Pontos to the eastern parts of the world and the land of the Paropamisadai adjacent to India (for they called Mount Paropamisos, Kaukasos), to enhance the glory of Alexander as if he had passed over Kaukasos. And again, he says that when the Macedonians saw in India itself oxen marked with a brand in the form of a club, they took this as a proof that Herakles had gone as far as the Indians.[^91]

Stoneman is of the opinion that the conquest of Aornos seemed to be the point at which the myth of Heracles began to infiltrate the myth of Alexander in a significant way (Stoneman, 2019: 86). But, many ancient writers like Eratosthenes, Strabo, Arrian doubted the authenticity of these claims and noted that these legends were mere fabrications by Alexander’s flatterers and were boasted only on magnify Alexander’s achievements (Stoneman, 2019: 86).

Strabo says, “That these are fabrications of the flatterers of Alexander is clear, especially because the historians do not agree with one another, with some speaking about but others simply not recording them” (Strabo 15.1.9).”[^92]

Why Dionysus

As the lineage of the Macedonian Royal House was connected to Heracles, it is easier for us to understand why Alexander would have wanted to surpass him and why was he eager to see any signs of Heracles in India. But why was he hoping to see signs of Dionysus as well? Even though Dionysus was not considered an ancestor of the Macedonian royal house in earlier times, he had been worshipped there by the fourth century BCE (Stoneman, 2019: 91) and Nysa was the place where Dionysus was considered to have been born or reared. According to Greek traditions, Nysa was traditionally localized in Arabia, however, this Nysa had already been traditionally situated in multiple places like in Euboea, Thrace, Lydia and Ethiopia as well.⁹³ But after Darius’ victory over India, the knowledge and tales regarding the mysterious land had already started to take shape in the classical Greek world. It was at this time in a play by Euripides, a fifth century BCE author and a tragedian of classical Athens, that Dionysus was made a conqueror of all of Asia including Bactria and India. It wouldn’t be wrong to assume that this play must have been known to Alexander. (Stoneman, 2019: 93). Euripides’ plays “The Bacchae and The Cyclops could have influenced Alexander by allowing for Dionysus to have potentially traveled to India and for Alexander being able to claim descent from Dionysus respectively.”[^94] The Macedonian king was therefore predisposed to find signs of Dionysus’ presence in India along with Heracles.

However, there is another intriguing reason as to why Alexander might have wanted to identify with Dionysus. Stoneman tries to reason an interesting possibility – Dionysus was a god who had a mortal mother, though his father was Zeus. Like Heracles, Stoneman continues, he was a latecomer to Olympus, but unlike Heracles he was a ‘true god’, because his mother Semele was also translated to Olympus (Stoneman, 2019: 91). So, Alexander probably wanted to surpass the deeds of a ‘true god’ in his campaign in India. And that’s why Dionysus and his legends related to Nysa in India became much more valuable for Alexander.

Divine similarities

It is clearly not that the case that Alexander was creating every legend from the scratch. After all, there were stark similarities between the gods of the local inhabitants and their religious practices with what Alexander and his army encountered in India. But, as we analyzed in previous sections, these were possibly related to even more ancient/archaic Neolithic connections. Another point to remember is that this identification with the Greek gods was neither limited to India. In fact, as we read before, this was the same in the case of Ammon of Egypt, Melkart of Tyre and also interestingly, in another example of the ‘Gallic Heracles’ Ogmius, who was represented as a very old man who, besides his club, bow and lion-skin, has a chain bored through his tongue by which he leads his followers.**⁹⁵ **Clearly, the similarities of a Greek and a foreign god need not be that close for Greeks to identify them (Stoneman, 2019: 87) as the extensions of their divinities. The Greeks’, Bevan says,’ ‘always experienced a keen joy of recognition, when they could connect foreign things with the figures of their own legends..” **⁹⁶ **Though, it can also very well be argued that this was not peculiar to the Greeks but was part of the general traits of ancient polytheistic religions and cultures across the world.

Therefore, Alexander’s predisposition to find imprints of Dionysus and to some extent Heracles in India led him and his army to ascribe whatever similarities they could find in the local religious practices and identify them as extensions of the Greek gods. This is the reason that when they found mountains where vines and ivy grew, they connected it to a sign of Greek divinity. The Macedonians and Greeks do not seem to have understood that it was simply a question of altitude whether such plants grew in ‘India’, but still took it as a sign of the god’s presence.**⁹⁷ **Arrian noted that the Indians wore dappled clothing like Bacchants and banged drums and cymbals a lot (Stoneman, 2019: 94). The wine-cult also seemed to have been prevalent. These ‘Dionysiac’/‘Bacchalic’ style of the festivities of the inhabitants of the ancient Kamboja and Gandh āra must have solidified this belief of the Greeks and the Macedonians. We have to understand that Alexander and his companions were not seeking to explain phenomena of Indian religion, but to find evidence for Dionysus in this unfamiliar land (Stoneman, 2019: 97).

PR

Hence, it’s not that unique that Greeks saw their divinities in the foreign ones but what is rather unique is the precision with which this was put to use by Alexander for his ‘public relations’. Arrian says about Alexander with regard to the legend of Dionysus and Nysa in India – “since he had himself reached the place to which that deity had come, and meant to penetrate farther than he; for the Macedonians, he thought, would not refuse to share his toils if he advanced with an ambition to rival the exploits of Dionysos.” (M’Crindle, 1896: 81). Alexander perceived that by sparing the citizens he had not so much served their interests as those of his own army.[^98]

Readers should also notice how Alexander was being presented in these stories. It was clearly not anymore about god Dionysus but equally or rather more importantly about Alexander himself. Arrian relates in what posture and condition the deputies from Nysa in India found Alexander:

“the deputies, it is said, on entering the Alexander’s tent found him sitting in his armour, covered with dust from his journey, wearing his helmet, grasping his spear. They fell to the ground in amazement at the sight and remained for a long time silent. ” (M’Crindle, 1896: 80).

Justin also states:

“…When he had reached the city of Nysa, and found that the inhabitants offered no resistance, he ordered their lives to be spared, from a sentiment of reverence towards Father Bacchus, by whom the city had been founded ; at the same time congratulating himself that he had not only undertaken a military expedition like that god, but had even followed his very footsteps. He then led his army to view the sacred mountain, which the genial climate had mantled over with vine and ivy..”(M’Crindle, 1896: 321).

There are also other instances in India other than Nysa, which according to the classical writers, Alexander was told to have appeared a divine to the inhabitants. As soon as Alexander entered the ‘boundaries of India’, he was met by the petty kings of the area, who ‘welcomed him as the third son of Zeus to come that way’, according to Curtius. When the army reached the Oxydracae (Kṣūdrakas), near the junction of the Hydaspes ( Jhelum) and Acesines (Chenab), the people announced that ‘they wished to retain the freedom which they had preserved for all time from Dionysus’ arrival in India to that of Alexander. Strabo even said that they claimed descent from Dionysus, which he must have got from one or other of the Alexander historians. Further south, the people they called the Sabarcae (in the region of Multan) were so terrified by the sight of the Macedonian army that ‘they believed an army of gods was approaching with a second Father Liber (a name famous among those peoples).[^99]

How much importance was being given to this narrative of Alexander and his divinity can be seen in the statements of both Arrian and Plutarch. Both state that Alexander trained the Indians to respect the gods, among whom he included himself.[^100] This was again not only in case of India but there were other examples as well in which as per Strabo Alexander added himself to the gods already worshipped by the Arabs, namely Zeus and Dionysus (Stoneman, 2019: 81).

Further morale boosting

But despite such publicized signs of the divine in India, Alexander’s men were losing their morale; they had been pushed to their limits. Neither the conquest of Bactria-Sogdiana, nor of India was ever a part of the plan. The army of Alexander was exhausted and the apprehension of facing an even bigger force, if they moved ahead, made the soldiers worried. When they refused to march beyond Hyphasis, Alexander gave this speech to the soldiers, where we again see the importance of the legends of Dionysus and Heracles related to India –

“…Know ye not that it was not by staying at home in Tiryns or Argos, or even in Peloponnesos or Thebes, that our ancestor was exalted to such glory, that from being a man he became, or was thought to be, a god. Nor were the labours few even of Dionysos, who ranks as a god far above Herakles. But we have advanced beyond Nysa, and the rock Aornos, which proved impregnable to Herakles, is in our possession…”[^101]

But Alexander could not persuade his men and the soldiers remained steadfast in wanting to retreat.

Alexander’s campaign in India and his discovery of a city of Nysa gave fire to the legend of Dionysus and him being intimately connected to Alexander. Though, Dionysus was not an ancestor of the Macedonian house, Stoneman says that by the end of Alexander’s reign somebody had managed to insert him there: ‘the stemma was fully fledged in the Ptolemaic period, and there was every reason for its evolution at Alexander’s court’. This is more obvious when we see that Dionysus appeared as a symbol of Alexander in the Grand Procession of Ptolemy Philadelphus.**¹⁰² **Even though, as mentioned before, Dionysus was already an important god in Macedonia but now Alexander adopted Dionysus as a presiding deity of his reign (Stoneman, 2019: 91).

For the same reason, Megasthenes had hoped to identify Heracles and Dionysus in India because Alexander had insisted they were there (Stoneman, 2019: 88). The legend of Dionysus’ expedition to India clearly accelerated after Alexander’s death, turning up in several lost Hellenistic epics, and ultimately culminating in the epic by ancient author Nonnus (Stoneman, 2019: 98) in which he wrote –

From a wind-tossed branch a Hamadryad Nymph bent low, emerging womanly from her leafy flanks. Thyrsus in hand, she looked just like a Bacchant . . . and whispered in the ear of grape-draped Dionysus: ‘God of Wine, lord gardener of the fruits . . . I am a Hamadryad of the beautiful leaves; and here, where fierce warriors lie in wait for you, I will reject my fatherland and save your army from death. I offer loyalty to your satyrs, although I am Indian, and I take the part of Dionysus.’

— Nonnus, Dionysiaca 22. 84–100[^103]

Conclusion

As perfectly put by Stoneman, *“Alexander came to India not just with a research project (if he did) but with a determination to stamp on the alien land a character that he and his fellow Macedonians could recognize.”***¹⁰⁴ **And this amplified the legends related to Dionysus and his city of Nysa in India. Does that mean that there is no evidence of any settlement of pre-Alexandrian Greeks in India? As discussed in the previous sections, on basis of numismatics and even ancient Indian sources, there is such a possibility of Greeks being present in India in the north-west of the sub-continent or there is even a possibility of their settlements in some outlying provinces of the country. But, the evidence is not conclusive enough in this regard and that’s why the question of any proper pre-Alexandrian Greek settlements in India should be considered in negative until any more conclusive evidence emerges. What is conclusive is that the ‘Nysa in India’ was a legend that had not much to do with facts and got early mention due to the plays by written by Euripides and got more popular due to the campaign of Alexander. The native tribes of ancient Kamboja of the sub-continent were the actual inhabitants of ‘Nysa’. There is a stronger possibility of Greek presence in Bactria-Sogdiana as suggested by the story regarding the exile of Branchidae.

What is conclusive on the basis of the same evidence is that directly or indirectly, the civilizations of India and Greece were for sure in contact by fifth century BCE and the Persian Empire was the catalyst of these contacts. And, these contacts only accelerated after Alexander even though his conquests in India were soon undone by Chandragupta Maurya. What is conclusive is that narratives regarding the erstwhile Kafirs, the remaining Kalash or any tribe of the sub-continent for that matter and them being the ‘Greek descendants’- Alexander’s or otherwise – should really be put to rest. The genetic studies mentioned in the post have found those claims baseless. And there are enough plausible reasons, alluded to in the post that explains any similarities between these far away civilizations.

There is no doubt that an imprint of Greek civilization and ideas were felt strongly in ancient India – even more so in various aspects of the culture of the ancient Indian north-west, particularly after the establishment of the Graeco-Bactrian Kingdom and more when Indo-Greeks found their foothold in the country in later centuries. As mentioned earlier, the art of the region was most strongly influenced by these contacts but the ideas and the emotions portrayed in that art remained rooted in the indigenous religion and culture.

What should certainly be understood is that the idea of a city of ‘Nysa in India’ founded by Dionysus and the subsequent popularity of these legends in the western classical world had a lot to do with Alexander’s campaign, in mythologisation of his expedition in heroic terms, his attempts to surpass his divine ancestors and interestingly, his belief in his own divinity.

References

**⁷ **ibid. p. 164

**¹¹ **Jayaswal, 1934. An Imperial History of India. p. 16
**¹² **Vassiliades, 2004. Greeks and Buddhism… pp. 134-135
**¹³ **ibid. p. 135
**¹⁴ **Lal, 2004. p. 1116

¹⁸ Stoneman, 2019. The Greek Experience of India: From Alexander to the Indo-Greeks. p. 28
¹⁹ Vassiliades, 2004. p . 136
²⁰ Tola & Dragonetti, 1986. p. 167
²¹ ibid.
²² M’Crindle, 1896. p. 79
²³ ibid.
²⁴ ibid.
²⁵ ibid. p. 80
²⁶ ibid. p. 82
²⁷ ibid. p. 192
²⁸ ibid.
²⁹ ibid. p. 338
³⁰ Tarn, 1922. The Greeks in Bactria & India. p. 168,244
³¹ Narain, 1957. p. 3
³² ibid.
³³ Panchenko, 2002. The City of the Branchidae and the Question of Greek Contribution to the Intellectual History of India and China. p. 244
³⁴ Hammond, 1998. The Branchidae at Didyma and in Sogdiana. p .341
³⁵ Narain, 1957. p. 3
³⁶ Linonel, 2005. Historical Commentary on Herodotus Book 6. p. 121
³⁷ Panchenko, 2002. p. 246-247
³⁸ ibid. p. 248
³⁹ ibid. p. 249
⁴⁰ Davis, 1960. Greek and Roman Coins and their Historical Interest. p. 71
⁴¹ Jansari, 2018. The Spophytes Coins: from Punjab to Bactria and back again. p. 76
⁴² Gardner, 1880. On Some Coins of Syria and Bactria. p. 191
⁴³ Rapson, 1898. Indian Coins. p. 3
⁴⁴ Head, 1906. The Earliest Graeco-Bactrian and Graeco-Indian Coins. p. 8
⁴⁵ Narain, 1957. p. 4
⁴⁶ Goyal, 1999. The Origin and Antiquity of Coinage in India. p. 145
⁴⁷ Bopearachchi, 2000. Coin Production and Circulation in Central Asia and North-West India (Before and After Alexander’s Conquest. p. 314
⁴⁸ ibid. p. 309
⁴⁹ Mansoor, A., et al. 2004. Investigation of the Greek ancestry of populations from northern Pakistan.
⁵⁰ Firasat, S., et al. 2007. Y-chromosomal evidence for a limited Greek contribution to the Pathan population of Pakistan.
⁵¹ Ayub, Q., et al. 2015. The Kalash genetic isolate: ancient divergence, drift, and selection.
⁵² Narasimhan, et al. 2019. The formation of human populations in South and Central Asia.
⁵³ Cacopardo, 2011. Are the Kalasha Really of Greek Origin? p. 57
⁵⁴ Abdullaev, 2017. Funeary Tradition of the Ancient East in Examples from Anatolia and Bactria-Margian. Origins or Parallels? pp. 44-45
⁵⁵ Wilber, 1962. Afghanistan: its people, its society, its culture. p. 51
⁵⁶ ibid.
⁵⁷ Parkes, 1987. Livestock Symbolism and Pastoral Ideology Among the Kafirs of the Hindu Kush. p. 647
⁵⁸ Jettmar, 2002. Beyond the Gorges of the Indus: Archaeology before Excavation. p. 19
⁵⁹ Wilson, 1866. The Vishnu Purana: A System of Hindu Mythology and Tradition. Vol III. p. 292
⁶⁰ Wilber, 1962. p. 50
⁶¹ Filigenzi, 2019. Non-Buddhist Customs of Buddhist People: Visual and Archaeological Evidence from North-West Pakistan. p. 60
⁶² ibid. p. 61
⁶³ ibid. p. 63
⁶⁴ ibid. p. 78
⁶⁵ Cacopardo, 2011. p. 74
⁶⁶ ibid. pp. 74-75
⁶⁷ ibid. pp. 72-74
⁶⁸ ibid. p. 76
⁶⁹ Filigenzi, 2019. p. 74
⁷⁰ Witzel, 2004. Kalash Religion. The Ṛgvedic Religious System and its Central Asian and Hindukush Antecedents.
⁷¹ Cacopardo, 2011. pp. 48-49
⁷² ibid. p. 49
⁷³ ibid. pp. 50-51
⁷⁴ ibid. p. 51
⁷⁵ ibid. p. 54
⁷⁶ ibid. p. 54
⁷⁷ ibid. p. 56
⁷⁸ ibid. p. 55
⁷⁹ ibid. p. 61
⁸⁰ ibid. p. 62
⁸¹ ibid. p. 70
⁸² Leitch, 2018. Alexander The Great’s Use of Myth on Campaign. p. 110
⁸³ ibid.
⁸⁴ ibid. p. 111
⁸⁵ ibid.
⁸⁶ ibid. p. 112
⁸⁷ Gilley & Worthington, 2010. Alexander The Great, Macedonia & Asia. A Companion to Ancient Macedonia. p.195
⁸⁸ Stoneman, 2019. p. 83
⁸⁹ Leitch, 2018. p. 112
⁹⁰ Stoneman, 2019. p. 84
⁹¹ M’Crindle, 1896. p. 83
⁹² Leitch, 2018. p. 112
⁹³ Stoneman, 2019. p. 93
⁹⁴ Leitch, 2018. p. 113
⁹⁵ Stoneman, 2019. p. 87
⁹⁶ Law, 1943. Tribes in Ancient India. p. 154
⁹⁷ Stoneman, 2019. p. 93
⁹⁸ M’Crindle, 1896. pp. 321-322
⁹⁹ Stoneman, 2019. p. 94
¹⁰⁰ ibid. p. 81
¹⁰¹ M’Crindle, 1896. p. 124
¹⁰² Stoneman, 2019. p. 98
¹⁰³ ibid. p. 91
¹⁰⁴ ibid. p. 81

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M’Crindle, 1896. The Invasion of India by Alexander the Great. p. 79 ↩︎
Lal, 2004. Yavanas in the Ancient Indian Inscriptions. p. 1115 ↩︎
Unvala, 1947. Political and Cultural Relations.. p. 174 ↩︎
Lal, 2004. p. 1115 ↩︎
Vasant, 1988. Yavanas in Western India. p. 331 ↩︎
Tola & Dragonetti, 1986. India and Greece Before Alexander. p. 159 ↩︎
Narain, 1957. The Indo-Greeks. p. 1 ↩︎
Lal, 2004. p. 1115 ↩︎
ibid. ↩︎
Bhandarkar, 1921. Lectures on Ancient Indian Numismatics.. p. 26 ↩︎
ibid. p. 27 ↩︎