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214 INDO- GREEK AND INDO - PARTHIAN DYNASTIES judgment in the matter, it is essential to bear dates in mind. Alexander stayed only nineteen months in India, and however far-reaching his plans may have been, it is manifestly impossible that during those few months of incessant conflict he should have founded Hellenic institutions on a permanent basis or materially affected the structure of Hindu polity and society. As a matter of fact he did nothing of the sort, and within two years of his death, with the exception of some small garrisons under Eudamos in the Indus valley, the whole apparatus of Macedonian rule had been swept away. After the year 316 B.C. not a trace of it remained. The only mark of Alexander's direct influence on India is the existence of a few coins modelled in imitation of Greek types which were struck by Saubhuti (So- phytes), the chief of the Salt Range, whom he subdued at the beginning of the voyage down the rivers. Twenty years after Alexander's death, Seleukos Nikator attempted to recover the Macedonian conquests east of the Indus, but failed, and more than failed, being obliged not only to forego all claims on the provinces temporarily occupied by Alexander, but to surrender a large part of Ariana, west of the Indus, to Chandra- gupta Maurya. The Indian administration and society so well described by Megasthenes, the ambassador of Seleukos, were Hindu in character, with some features borrowed from Persia, but none from Greece. The assertion that the development of India depended on the institutions of Alexander is a grotesque travesty of the truth.