I came across ‘When Euripides was Performed in the Hindu Kush - Greeks and Buddhists in Afghanistan’ by Kenneth Rexroth today. He writes:

“It is not generally known that after Alexander had conquered the Persian Empire to its eastern limits at the Indus River he established a number of Greek, or Greek garrisoned, cities in what is now Pakistan and Afghanistan. Cut off from the rest of the Greek world, Greeks ruled here until the beginning of the Christian Era.”

“This was the Bactrian Kingdom which at one time included most of Afghanistan (Bactria is the Afghan city of Balkh), Turkestan, Pakistan, and even, for a while, a large section of India south of the Indus.”

“We know little of the rulers, but they left behind their faces on the coins, the finest examples of portrait coinage ever done. Their subtle, arrogant faces look much like the British gentleman adventurers of the East India Company who were to come after them in 2000 years. Eucratides even wears something remarkably like a pith helmet.”

“Here Mahayana Buddhism grew up, flourished, and spread across Asia to Japan. With it went artists and decorators who filled the temples and monastic caves of Further Asia with paintings and sculpture that derive their plastic inspiration from the far away Greek Mediterranean. Their artistic output was incredible: its limitless bulk staggers the imagination. Although I suppose it was what we would call today a kind of commercial art, the product of studios organized on a modern production basis, it is nevertheless unquestionably the finest expression of the Greek genius after the days of Alexander, except possibly for some work done for the Romans during the reign of Augustus.”

“We know that the plays of Euripides were performed in courts that looked out from the Hindu Kush over the deserts of Central Asia. We know that Hercules and Vishnu, Bacchus and Shiva were confused on their coinage. We know that Buddhism, originally a kind of atheistic religious empiricism, was turned into a Mystery Religion of the Mediterranean type.” “A last detail–for a long time philologists were puzzled by an Aryan language spoken by a few savage, murderous, filthy robber bands in the mountains and valleys of the Northwest Border. They were certainly the most debased and intractable of all the inhabitants of an intractable region. Then somebody pointed out that the language was simply a degenerate form of the language of Plato.”

None of this is news for those of us who are familiar with the ancient history of the region including the kingdom of Gandhara and its cities: Peshawar and Taxila. Pakistan has troves of historical sites and is home to the remains of some of the most ancient cultures that have lived on our planet.

A couple of years ago, I had the chance to visit Taxila. A large number of Taxila’s treasures were in a derelict state after years of looting and negligence but the sites were still impressive. The influences of the hellenistic age were clearly visible in the art of that era. It was particularly fascinating to see results of the blending of two cultures being represented in art. The Buddhist statues had been obviously influenced by the Greeks and the facial features in sculptures of Buddha also represented a marked change compared to the statues dating from earlier periods.

I think it’s also important to remember that the Greeks just like many other invaders didn’t go back home. They mixed with the local population. The influence of various invading armies has shaped the people and culture of that region to what it is today despite claims to the contrary by some cultural purists.

I have also had the chance to visit the British Museum in London, England and the Glenbow Museum in Calgary, Canada. Both of these museums have some impressive pieces from the region. The British Museum is especially worth a visit.