08-12-2011, 06:25 AM
1) Frank L. Holt's Thundering Zeus (1999) masterfully pieces together the early history of Hellenistic Bactria, but it doesn't really address your question. However, his more recent work, Into the Land of Bones, does discuss the legacy of the Greeks, and near the end of his work he cites A. K. Narain: "The strongest response [to Tarn] came from A. K. Narain, a fine Indian scholar whose book The Indo-Greeks first appeared in 1957, the year of Tarn's death. Narain's counterblast emphasized the other side of the coins--namely, the obvious Indian influences in language, religion, and philosophy that transformed the Graeco-Bactrians into Indo-Greeks. Narain downplayed the effect of benevolent Hellenism in the East, soberly assessing the legacy of Alexander and his settlers from a different perspective: 'Their history is part of the history of India and not of the Hellenistic states: they came, they saw, but India conquered.'" (152-153) Holt himself concludes that "the first European attempt to transform Afghanistan had ultimately failed." (164) Thus, to answer your question, modern scholarship generally de-emphasizes the influence of the Greeks in Bactria; they were mostly on the receiving-end of cultural exchange, finally being enveloped by the native cultures.
2. One thing to consider is that a large number of Greeks likely made it to Bactria long before Alexander's arrival, many of them sent as exiles by the Achaemenids. These Greeks ultimately intermingled with native elements and, to quote Narain, "probably to some extent identified themselves with the local Iranians in social and political life." If these non-Hellenized individuals represented the colonists that went further east, it's unlikely they would have exhibited much "Greek" influence on their neighbors.
As for the Dayuan, it seems they were more closely related to the Yuezhi than the Greeks. Recall that the Yuezhi helped topple the Greco-Bactrian kingdom.
3. A quick glance at Wikipedia will reveal that the Chinese independently developed most of their technology. Just think that the Greeks developed a crossbow without Chinese influence.
2. One thing to consider is that a large number of Greeks likely made it to Bactria long before Alexander's arrival, many of them sent as exiles by the Achaemenids. These Greeks ultimately intermingled with native elements and, to quote Narain, "probably to some extent identified themselves with the local Iranians in social and political life." If these non-Hellenized individuals represented the colonists that went further east, it's unlikely they would have exhibited much "Greek" influence on their neighbors.
As for the Dayuan, it seems they were more closely related to the Yuezhi than the Greeks. Recall that the Yuezhi helped topple the Greco-Bactrian kingdom.
3. A quick glance at Wikipedia will reveal that the Chinese independently developed most of their technology. Just think that the Greeks developed a crossbow without Chinese influence.
God bless.
Jeff Chu
Jeff Chu
