Page:History of India Vol 2.djvu/250

 212 INDO- GREEK AND INDO- PARTHIAN DYNASTIES emperor, who, without striking a blow, and by the mere terror of the Roman name, had compelled the Parthians to restore the standards of Crassus (20 B. c.), which had been captured thirty-three years earlier. Still later probably are those coins of Kadphises I which dispense altogether with the royal effigy, and present on the obverse an Indian bull, and on the reverse a Bactrian camel, devices fitly symbolizing the conquest of India by a horde of nomads. Thus the numismatic record offers a distinctly legi- ble abstract of the political history of the times, and tells in outline the story of the gradual supersession of the last outposts of Greek authority by the irresisti- ble advance of the hosts from the steppes of Central Asia. When the European historian, with his mind steeped in the conviction of the immeasurable debt owed to Hellas by modern civilization, stands by the side of the grave of Greek rule in India, it is inevitable that he should ask what was the result of the contact be- tween Greece and India. Was Alexander to Indian eyes nothing more than the irresistible cavalry leader before whose onset the greatest armies were scattered like chaff, or was he recognized, consciously or uncon- sciously, as the pioneer of Western civilization and the parent of model institutions? Did the long-continued government of Greek rulers in the Panjab vanish before the assault of rude barbarians without leaving a trace of its existence save coins, or did it impress a Hellenic stamp upon the ancient fabric of Indian polity?