as late as 9–6 b.c. for the inscription is favored by some on the theory that the era began after the death of Mithradates II in 88/87 b.c.[1]
Heretofore Parthia has been considered almost solely from the Graeco-Roman viewpoint. Parthian influence in India must be regarded as an Indo-Iranian culture in which other elements such as the Hellenistic are present. In a similar manner many phases of the Parthian occupation of Dura-Europus and Seleucia on the Tigris which hitherto have found no counterpart in western Hellenism may be explained as local Graeco-Iranian. That in the Parthian period both India and Mesopotamia faced more toward Iran than toward Hellenized Syria has only recently been recognized.[2] Proof for this lies in material excavated at Taxila, Seleucia, and Dura-Europus, some of which has already appeared in print, though much is still in press or remains unpublished in museums.
From the time of the Indian invasion by the Sacae, the latter are so closely connected both politically and culturally with the Parthians that they cannot be distinguished one from the other. The fact that "very few true Parthian coins are found in India"[3] furnishes additional evidence for the belief that the
- ↑ See the articles by Konow cited on p. 64, n. 30, and McGovern, Early Empires (in press).
- ↑ So both Rapson in CHI, I, 568, and M. I. Rostovtzeff, Caravan Cities (Oxford, 1932), pp. 157 and 214 f., and in "Dura and the Problem of Parthian Art," Yale Classical Studies, V (1935), 298 f.
- ↑ Sir John Marshall in a letter of April 19, 1935, to the writer.
