Page:History of India Vol 2.djvu/254

 216 INDO- GREEK AND INDO - PARTHIAN DYNASTIES civilization of India. It is noticeable that the Hindu astronomer refers to Menander's Greeks as the " vi- ciously valiant Yavanas." The Indians were impressed by both Alexander and Menander as mighty captains, not as missionaries of culture, and no doubt regarded both those sovereigns as impure barbarians, to be feared, but not imitated. The East has seldom shown much readiness to learn from the West, and when Indians have condescended, as in the cases of relief sculpture and the drama, to borrow ideas from European teachers, the thing bor- rowed has been so cleverly disguised in native trap- pings that the originality of the Indian imitators is stoutly maintained even by acute and learned critics. The Pan jab, or a considerable part of it, with some of the adjoining regions, remained more or less under Greek rule for nearly two centuries and a half, from the time of Demetrios (190 B. c.) to the overthrow of Hermaios by the Kushans (dr. 50 A. D.), and we might reasonably expect to find clear signs of Hellenization in those countries. But the traces of Hellenic influence w even there are surprisingly slight and trivial. Except the coins, which retain Greek legends on the obverse, and are throughout mainly Greek in type, although they begin to be bilingual from the time of Demetrios and Eukratides, scarcely any indication of the pro- longed foreign rule can be specified. The coinage un- doubtedly goes far to prove that the Greek language was that used in the courts of the frontier princes, but the introduction of native legends on the reverses