16. Rachel Mairs (Faculty of Classics, St Catharine's College, Cambridge, University, UK)
Hellenistic India

Given the long colonial domination of India by Britain and the traumatic emergence of the modern independent states of the Indian Subcontinent, it is hardly surprising that the question of earlier relations between India and Greece - a western ‘colonialist power’ - has been an extremely emotive one. The classically-educated officers of the Raj saw themselves as the heirs of the ancient Greeks and Romans, a ‘civilising influence’ on the barbarian East. In contrast, Indian nationalists sought to emphasise the antiquity and sophistication of Indian civilisation, playing down any western influence. Both sides made a clear identification between the ancient Greeks and the modern British (each perceived as representatives of 'European' culture and colonialism), an identification which has continued to be made without more careful consideration of the evidence.

This paper will consider the development of Indo-Greek studies, with special reference to the Indo-Greek states of the north-western Indian Subcontinent from the third century BC to first century AD. Historians of different periods and different nationalities have approached this subject in ways which closely relate to ideas on colonialism and East-West relations in their own times. Throughout, perceptions of the Indo-Greeks have been closely tied to perceptions of modern European colonialism.

'Hellenistic' has therefore become a dangerous word to use with reference to ancient India. To some, it is reminiscent of outdated, Eurocentric scholarship. This, however, fails to do justice to modern developments in historiography of the Hellenistic period. The Hellenistic world is now viewed as a more complex entity, which was populated by a diversity of ethnicities and cultural groups and responded in diverse ways to the problems and opportunities this created. This development provides an opportunity for the Indo-Greeks to be studied within a more productive intellectual framework than that within which they have previously been treated.

Back