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putra, which is the modern Patna. Menander had to retire, however, to Bactria. He is supposed to have been a convert to Buddhism, and has been immortalized under the name of Milinda in a celebrated dia- logue entitled The Questions of Milinda , which is one of the most noted books in Buddhist literature.
Heliocles, son of Eucratides, seems to have been the last Greek king to rule north of the Hindu Kush Mountains.
This phase of Asiatic history is reflected by the mention of the Greek coinage of Apollodotus and Menander, current in Barygaza at the time of the Periplus. The coins must have been over 200 years old, and the preservation of small silver coins in commercial use for that length of time is remarkable.
To understand the ‘very warlike nation of the Bactrians’ which our author mentions as ‘living in the interior under their own king,' one must go to the history of central Asia. Chinese annals mention that in the year 165 B. C., a nomadic Turki tribe in northwestern China and owing allegiance to the Chinese emperors, known as the Yueh-chi, were driven out of their territory by the Hiongnu or Tar- tars, and migrated westward. This displaced numerous savage tribes in central Asia, who in turn moved westward; and thus the great waves of migration were begun which inundated Europe for centuries, overwhelmed the Roman Empire, and long threatened to extinguish white civilization.
The Yueh-chi in their westward movement drove out a tribe known as the Saka, who had lived between the Chu and Jaxartes rivers. T hese tribes in the years 140-130 poured into Bactria, over- whelmed the Greek Kingdom there and continued into the country known as Seistan, then called, from its conquerors, Sakastene. Another branch of the Saka horde settled in Taxila in the Panjab and Mathura on the Jumna, where Saka princes ruled for more than a century under the Parthian power. These Saka tribes seem to have been originally connected with the Parthians. Another section of the Sakas at a later date pushed on southward and occupied the peninsula of Surashtra, founding a Saka dynasty which lasted for centuries. This country is referred to by the author of the Periplus in § 38 as “subject to Parthian princes who were constantly driving each other out.”
The Sakas of India seem to have been subject to the Parthians, and Indo-Parthian princes appear at Cabul and in the Panjab about 120 B. C. There is a long line of Parthian princes recorded as rul- ing in Cabul; among them Gondophares, who acceded in 21 A. D. and reigned in Cabul and the Panjab for thirty years. This is the same prince who is mentioned in the apocryphal ‘Acts of St. Thomas,’
