The Indo-Greeks


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The Greek Experience of India


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An exploration of how the Greeks reacted to and interacted with India from the third to first centuries BCE. When the Greeks and Macedonians in Alexander's army reached India in 326 BCE, they entered a new and strange world. They knew a few legends and travelers' tales, but their categories of thought were inadequate to encompass what they witnessed. The plants were unrecognizable, their properties unknown. The customs of the people were various and puzzling. While Alexander's conquest was brief, ending with his death in 323 BCE, the Greeks would settle in the Indian region for the next two centuries, forging an era of productive interactions between the two cultures. The Greek Experience of India explores the various ways that the Greeks reacted to and constructed life in India during this fruitful period. From observations about botany and mythology to social customs, Richard Stoneman examines the surviving evidence of those who traveled to India. Most particularly, he offers a full and valuable look at Megasthenes, ambassador of the Seleucid king Seleucus to Chandragupta Maurya, and provides a detailed discussion of Megasthenes's now-fragmentary book Indica. Stoneman considers the art, literature, and philosophy of the Indo-Greek kingdom and how cultural influences crossed in both directions, with the Greeks introducing their writing, coinage, and sculptural and architectural forms, while Greek craftsmen learned to work with new materials such as ivory and stucco and to probe the ideas of Buddhists and other ascetics.




The Graeco-Bactrian and Indo-Greek World


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This volume provides a thorough conspectus of the field of Graeco-Bactrian and Indo-Greek studies, mixing theoretical and historical surveys with critical and thought-provoking case studies in archaeology, history, literature and art. The chapters from this international group of experts showcase innovative methodologies, such as archaeological GIS, as well as providing accessible explanations of specialist techniques such as die studies of coins, and important theoretical perspectives, including postcolonial approaches to the Greeks in India. Chapters cover the region’s archaeology, written and numismatic sources, and a history of scholarship of the subject, as well as culture, identity and interactions with neighbouring empires, including India and China. The Graeco-Bactrian and Indo-Greek World is the go-to reference work on the field, and fulfils a serious need for an accessible, but also thorough and critically-informed, volume on the Graeco-Bactrian and Indo-Greek kingdoms. It provides an invaluable resource for anyone interested in the Hellenistic East.




The Greeks in Bactria and India


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A landmark study of the Greek kingdoms of Bactria and India that treats them as Hellenistic states.




The Coming of the Greeks


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When did the Indo-Europeans enter the lands that they occupied during historical times? And, more specifically, when did the Greeks come to Greece? Robert Drews brings together the evidence--historical, linguistic, and archaeological--to tackle these important questions.







Indo-Greek Jewellery


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In this monograph the writer has tried to show how the Greek jewellery motifs were imported into India, which have been discovered in the jewellery found in Taxila and other border towns where Alexander had allowed his soldiers to settle down. Among these soldiers were goldsmiths who just manufactured jewellery on Greek patterns but later influenced by Indian motifs began to mix these with Greek ones. This Indo - Greek jewellery found a ready market among the Indo - Greeks who inhabited these towns. The writer has dealt with the jewellery found under different chapters entitled the jewellery for the head, ears, neck, arms, wrist etc. This analytical thesis is of interest of all Indologists and is specially useful for scholars studying Indian jewellery and ornaments of the first century A.D. In this monograph the writer has tried to show how the Greek jewellery motifs were imported into India, which have been discovered in the jewellery found in Taxila and other border towns where Alexander had allowed his soldiers to settle down. Among these soldiers were goldsmiths who just manufactured jewellery on Greek patterns but later influenced by Indian motifs began to mix these with Greek ones. This Indo - Greek jewellery found a ready market among the Indo - Greeks who inhabited these towns. The writer has dealt with the jewellery found under different chapters entitled the jewellery for the head, ears, neck, arms, wrist etc. This analytical thesis is of interest of all Indologists and is specially useful for scholars studying Indian jewellery and ornaments of the first century A.D.




The Origins of Philosophy in Ancient Greece and India


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Explains for the first time the genesis and early form of both Indian and Greek philosophy, and their striking similarities.




Alexander the Great


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Alexander the Great (356-323 B.C.) precipitated immense historical change in the Mediterranean and Near Eastern worlds. But the resonance his legend achieved over the next two millennia stretched even farther across foreign cultures, religious traditions, and distant nations. This engaging and handsomely illustrated book for the first time gathers together hundreds of the colorful Alexander legends that have been told and retold around the globe. Richard Stoneman, a foremost expert on the Alexander myths, introduces us first to the historical Alexander and then to the Alexander of legend, an unparalleled mythic icon who came to represent the heroic ideal in cultures from Egypt to Iceland, from Britain to Malaya. Alexander came to embody the concerns of Hellenistic man; he fueled Roman ideas on tyranny and kingship; he was a talisman for fourth-century pagans and a hero of chivalry in the early Middle Ages. He appears in Jewish, Christian, and Islamic writings, frequently as a prophet of God. Whether battling winged foxes or meeting with the Amazons, descending to the underworld or inventing the world s first diving bell, Alexander inspired as a hero, even a god. Stoneman traces Alexander s influence in ancient literature and folklore and in later literatures of east and west. His book provides the definitive account of the legends of Alexander the Great a powerful leader in life and an even more powerful figure in the history of literature and ideas."




Militarism and the Indo-Europeanizing of Europe


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This book contends that Indo-European languages came to Greece, central Europe, southern Scandinavia and northern Italy no earlier than ca. 1600 BC, brought by the first military men whom Europeans had seen. That the Greek, Keltic, Italic and Germanic sub-groups of Indo-European originated in the middle of the second millennium BC is a controversial idea. Most Indo-Europeanists date the origin a thousand years earlier, and some archaeologists would place it before 5000 BC, as agriculture spread through Europe. Here Robert Drews argues that the Indo-European languages came into Europe via military conquests, and that militarism – a man’s pride in his weapons and in his status as a warrior - began with the employment of horse-drawn chariots in battle.