FOREIGN INFLUENCES ON INDIA.

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in Indian sculpture with the lapse of time, but that impulse Greekitself was gradually derived from less pure and less vigorous ^ es diesources. The Greek ideal of beauty may possibly havebeen brought direct to India by the officers and artists ofAlexander the Great . But it was from Grreco-Bactria, notfrom Greece itself, that the practical masters of Greek sculp-ture came to the Punjab . Indeed, important evidence hasbeen collected to show that the most prolific stream of suchartistic inspirations reached India from the Roman Empire,and in Imperial times, rather than through even the indirectGrecian channels represented by the Bactrian kingdom.

It must suffice here to indicate the ethnical and dynastic Foreigninfluences thus brought to bear upon India , without pausingto assign dates to the individual monarchs. The chronologyof the twelve centuries intervening between the Greeco-Bactrianperiod and the Muhammadan conquest still depends on amass of conflicting evidence derived from inscriptions, legend-ary literature, unwritten traditions, and coins. 1 Four systemsof computation exist, based upon the Vikramaditya, Saka,Seleucidan, and Parthian eras.

In the midst of the confusion, we see dim masses movingsouthward from Central Asia into India . The Graeco-Bactriankings or expeditions are traced by coins as far as Muttra onthe Jumna. Their armies occupied for a time the Punjab ,as far south as Gujarat and Sind. Sanskrit texts are saidto indicate their advance through the Middle Land of theBrahmans ( Madhya-desha ) to Saketa (or Ajodhya ), the capitalof Oudh, and to Patna in Behar. 2 Megasthenes was only thefirst of a series of Greek ambassadors to Bengal. 3 A Grecian Greeks inprincess became the queen of Chandra Gupta at Patna ( circ . Ben S a] -306 b.c.). Grasco-Bactrian girls, or Yavanis, were welcomegifts, and figure in the Sanskrit drama as the personal attend-ants of Indian kings. They were probably fair-complexionedslaves from the northern regions. It is right to add, however,

1 Report of the Archaeological Survey of Western India for 1874-75,p. 49 (Mr. E. Thomas’ monograph).

2 Goldstucker assigned the Yavana siege of Saketa (Ajodhya ), men-tioned in the Mahabhashya, to Menander ; while the accounts of theGargi Sanhitain the Yuga Purana speak of a Yavana expedition as far asPatna . But, as Weber points out {Hist. Ind. Lit. p. 251, footnote 276),the question arises as to whether these Yavanas were Grtvco- Hadrians orIndo-Scythians. See, however, Report of Archeeological Survey of WesternIndia for 1874-75, p. 49, and footnote.

Weber, IJist. Ind. Lit. p. 251 (ed. 1878), enumerates four.