Indo-Greek Kingdom

  General Description   The Indo-Greek ’kingdom’ was created after the Greco-Bactrians invaded northern India from 180 BCE. It consisted of a number of dynastic polities that ruled from regional capitals and formed a single entity only to the extent their rulers were able to collaborate. More than 30 kings are known, who were often in conflict with each other. ^[1]
Bopearachchi suggests the period was founded by two kings, Demetrius I and Agathocles, who ruled around 185 BCE, but Jakobsson (2009) believes that a later king known as Menander was "instrumental in the creation of the era." ^[2] The lack of consistent or reliable sources from either Western or Chinese sources means that much of what we know is speculative and reliant on numismatic evidence. ^[3]
It is likely the rulers, who simultaneously produced their own coinage, ruled different parts of the Indo-Greek polity and employed their own administrators. ^[4] Governance of the Indo-Greek region was for the most part through personal kingship and organization extended only to the limits of a particular king’s power. ^[5]
After 145 BCE, Successive nomadic invasions by Scythians and other nomads isolated the Indo-Greeks from the wider Hellenic world. By the beginning of the first century CE, the Greco-Bactrian state was extinguished as an independent entity. ^[1]
Of the legacy of the civilization, the Greek alphabet survived until the Islamic conquest as the script of the Bactrian language, and the conversion of a Indo-Greek King to Buddhism became a part of the zeitgeist of the Indian collective historical memory. ^[1]

[1]: (Bernard 2012, 42-52) Paul Bernard. ’Ai Khanum: A Greek Colony in Post-Alexandrian Central Asia, or How to Be Greek in an Oriental Milieu.’ in Elisabetta Valtz Fino. Joan Aruz. ed. 2012. Afghanistan: Forging Civilizations Along the Silk Road. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York.

[2]: (Jakobsson 2009) Jakobsson, Jens. Who Founded the Indo-Greek Era of 186/5 B.C.E.? Dec 2009. The Classical Quarterly. New Series. Vol. 59. No.2. pp. 505-510.

[3]: (Guillaume 1986, 1-16) Olivier Guillaume. 1986. "An Analysis of the Modes of Reconstruction of the Graeco-Bactrian and Indo-Greek History." Studies in History 2, no. 1

[4]: (Jakobsson 2009. 505-510) Jens Jakobsson. Who Founded the Indo-Greek Era of 186/5 B.C.E.? Dec 2009. The Classical Quarterly. New Series. Vol. 59. No.2.

[5]: (Jakobsson 2009, 505-510) Jens Jakobsson, Jens. Who Founded the Indo-Greek Era of 186/5 B.C.E.? Dec 2009. The Classical Quarterly. New Series. Vol. 59. No.2.