‘Nysa in India’ And Related Narratives

Alexander III of Macedon in his campaign of world conquest reached India in 327 BCE after attaining victory over the Persian Achaemenid Empire. It is reported by western classical sources that in India, the invaders stumbled on a city named Nysa and the inhabitants of the city told him that it was founded by none other than Dionysus. Alexander, we are told, was elated; he had found descendants of the Greeks in a far away land — conquered by the divine. As fascinating this tale is, a history enthusiast is intrigued to know more about the historicity of this tradition. Though as Arrian had rightly said, even if there is doubt about credibility of such events, they do not seem to be incredible altogether, if one takes divine agency into account.¹

But as this tradition is related to the Indian civilization and is intricately weaved with historical personalities, it becomes pertinent to understand the curious case of ‘Nysa in India’ in detail. This post is a humble attempt to do precisely that – to understand exactly what this city was, who were its people and were they really descendants of the Greeks? Or did such city even exist? What are the views of various scholars regarding this issue?

Intricately related to the campaign, the personality of Alexander and the tradition of Nysa in India are other narratives. Some scholars were of the view that the tradition signifies actual events related to the settlements of pre-Alexandrian Greeks in the outlying provinces of India. Some scholars have discussed the strong possibility that there exists in today’s Pakistan i.e. the ancient Indian north-west, the descendants of those Greeks. Some disagree with the view but say that Alexander and his army left behind some of his people and settlements whose descendants can be seen in today’s communities. Such communities claim therefore, that they are Alexander’s or his generals’ descendants. Is there a pattern, a narrative that we are missing behind these traditions? This post will therefore also attempt in detail to understand this topic and its related narratives and try to determine the authenticity of the traditions and the claims related to the question of Greek descent in the Indian sub-continent.

A relief carved on a 2nd century CE Roman sarcophagus depicting the legend of Dionysus and his triumphal march through the lands of India (Source)

As we are dealing with ancient history, we would have to keep in mind that even at the end of the post, there still might be inconclusive arguments in front of us due to many inter and intra-contradictory sources, except where scientific studies have presented conclusive facts for example the case of genetic studies, that will also be discussed in the post.

Before we consider the western classical sources which are our main body of information regarding the city of Nysa in India and its relation with Dionysus, it would be better to learn about when and how Indians learnt about the Greeks. The reason is because whatever we learn from the classical sources will have to be read and observed in the light of and corroboration with the Indian and Persian sources. Only then we might get a cohesive account of the events.

Table of Contents & its Links

• Eastern Sources
• Western Classical Sources
• Settlement of Branchidae in Sogdiana: A Possibility?
• Numismatics: The Athenian ‘Owls’
• The Question of ‘Greek Descent’
• Explaining the Parallelisms
• History of the Claims of ‘Greek Descent’
• Alexander & his Ambitions of Divinity
• Conclusion
• References
• Bibliography

Eastern Sources

§ Ancient Persian Sources

We all have heard the word Yavana while reading Indian history. In ancient Indian literature and inscriptions the word Yavana of Sanskrit and its equivalent Yona of Pāli were frequently used to refer to the westerners like the Romans in ancient times, later on for the the Arabs in the medieval times etc. But it is an established fact that originally, the word was meant to describe the Greeks and was only later used in the general westerners’ context.² The word came in to Indian use when Achaemenid King Darius (r. 522-486 BCE) conquered significant portions of the ancient north west India –  Gāndhāra [Gadāra Old Persian] and also the Sindh [Hi(n)du Old Persian]. The Achaemenid Empire now stretched on a huge landmass – “from the Saka who are living beyond Sogdia upto Kusha (Ethiopia) and from India up to Lydia”³ as an Achaemenid Inscription of Darius states. It is in the epigraphic record of Darius that we first notice the use of the Old Persian term Yauna.⁴

Etymologically, the word Yavana or Yona is considered to be derived from the Greek word Iawn or Iaones i.e. the word for Ionians. The Ionian Greeks were members of that division of the Hellenic race which occupied Attica and northern coast of Peloponeus, who also established their colonies in Asia Minor, where a large district, Ionia was named after them.⁵ The Persians, even the Hebrews called the Ionian Greeks Yauna and Yawan respectively and the word was later applied to the Greeks in general. It is considered that Indians most probably took the word from the Persians when they first encountered Greeks on the borders of their country (Lal, 2004:1115) when the limits of the Achaemenid Empire reached within India.

Therefore, it was due to Persia that the relations between India and the Greek world began.⁶ Even the respective names that these two civilizations had for each other were derivations from what the Achaemenids called them in Old Persian.⁷ Being ruled by the Achaemenids since the time of the King Darius, the ancient north western Indians and the Ionian Greeks were in mutual contact. Indian merchants might have met with the Greek merchants in markets of the Persian Empire. We already know that Indian archers were employed in the Persian army by King Xerxes to fight against Greeks in the battle of Plataea in 479 BCE (Vasant, 1988: 331).

§ Ancient Indian Sources

Hindu: In ancient Indian literature, it is in Aṣtādhyāyī of Pāṇini that the term related to the Greeks is first used. Pāṇini was an inhabitant of the ancient Indian north-west, in the vicinity of Taxila.⁸ In one if its sūtra while teaching the use of an affix, Yavanāni is given as an example. From Kātyāyana’s varttikā, it is further deduced that the example given in Aṣtādhyāyī was meant to indicate the Yavanallipyam i.e. Yavana handwriting (Lal, 2004: 1115). The Indian grammarians gave their own understanding of this word’s etymology and considered Yavana as derived from the Sanskrit root Yu meaning to mix or to mingle and thus signified a mixed people.⁹ It is also considered that the word Yavana is a secondary Sanskritization of the Pāli Yona.¹⁰

Even the Mahābhārata generally uses the term Yavana but Yauna is also encountered in the epic (Lal, 2004: 1115).  As Pāṇini is variously dated between the periods of 6^th to 4^th century BCE, it provides us a wide range for when the Indians came in contacts with the Greeks, at least enough to learn about their script. Achaemenid King Cyrus had completed his conquest of the Lydian Empire that included Ionian territories by 542 BCE but as mentioned above, it was in the period of Darius I in 515 BCE that Achaemenids conquered Indian lands comprising Gāndhāra and the Indus region.

Thus, it would be prudent to assume that at least in the commercial arenas of the vast Achaemenid Empire, the Indo-Greek contacts would have started to materialize from 5^th century BCE. If we add to this the fact that the Indian soldiers or mercenaries served in the army of Xerxes in the battle of Plataea in 479 BCE, it would have increased the knowledge of Indians about the Greeks because the soldiers who came back home would have certainly narrated about their adventures in the foreign lands. Along with this, if we consider the possibility from numismatic evidence and also of a Greek settlement in Bactria-Sogdiana — both will be dealt with shortly — we are now moving to the middle of the fifth century when the contacts between these two ancient civilizations would have increased.

It would also be safe to assume that information about the Yavana-s might have been known to the inhabitants in the north-west for some time before Pāṇini for him to mention them in his magnum opus.

At this moment, it is interesting to include an important piece of evidence from an 8^th century CE Buddhist text called the Ārya Mañjuśrī Mūlakalpa, which mentions Pāṇinī as a friend of the Nanda Emperor Mahāpadma Nanda. This would make Pāṇini flourishing a generation before Alexander i.e. between 366 – 338 BCE.¹¹ Thus, his information on the Yavana-s was based on them either living in the Indian territories of the Persian Empire or in the Persian satrapy of Bactria-Sogdiana which still would have brought some Greeks quite close to India.

There is also a consistent theme in ancient Indian literature that characterizes Yavana-s and Kamboja-s as quite similar, so much so that the two tribes are very much mentioned side by side. Both of them are frequently mentioned wearing their hair short. Similar examples for Yavana-s and Kamboja-s are found in the Mahābhārata and also in the Paurāṇik literature. While this suggests that Yavana-s and Kamboja-s lived near to each other, this information could also be assigned to a period later than Alexander’s and need not mean referring to the time before him.  Though, these texts certainly had deep layers from the very ancient and archaic Indian tradition, yet it was still taking its current form by the start of the Common Era. Therefore, those contacts need not be earliest ones and Pāṇini still remains the authority that provides us with an earliest window of period for first significant contacts between Indians and Yavana-s, which might have been increasing steadily since Darius’ victory in the north-west.

Buddhist: In Buddhist literature, one of the earliest references to Yavana-s occur in the Assalāyana Sutta of the Majjhima Nikāya that states the following discourse between Buddha and a young Brāhmaṇa named Assalāyana –

“What do you think about this Assalāyana? Have you heard that in the countries of the Yona (yonaraṭṭaṇa) and Kamboja (kambojaraṭṭaṇa) and other adjacent districts, there are only two castes, the master and the slave? And having been a master one becomes a slave; having been a slave one becomes a master?” – “Yes, I have heard this, Sir, in Yona and Kamboja…having been a slave, one becomes a master.”¹²

It is interesting to note that even here the Yavana-s and Kamboja-s are mentioned together. Some scholars consider this as a proof of the Indian awareness about relatively egalitarian societies of the classical Greeks and therefore a proof of Greek settlement in India at the time of Buddha which was probably adjacent to the tribe of the Kamboja-s. However, there is a caveat – even though forming the oldest layers of the Buddhist literature, Pāli texts were put to writing only in the 1st century BCE  and kept on developing in the 2^nd century CE.¹³

Thus, there is a strong possibility that this information also belongs to later centuries rather than being contemporary to the Buddha i.e. in 6^th century BCE (Vassiliades, 2004: 135). Another argument that favours it being a later interpolation is the fact that the Yona state or settlement is not mentioned as being one of the sixteen mahājanapada-s in the earliest of the Buddhist and the Jain texts (Vassiliades, 2004: 135). The Buddhist text named Chullaniddesa (part of the the Niddesa Buddhist scriptures which are  included in the  Sutta Piṭaka’s Khuddaka Nikāya) is the first one to substitute Yona for Gāndhāra in the list of the sixteen mahājanapada-s (Vassiliades, 2004: 135) but this is also tentatively dated between 2^nd century BCE and 1^st century BCE. Hence, we again come to the conclusion that on the authority of Pāṇinī, we can consider late fifth and early fourth century BCE as an approximate earliest date when the Greeks might have made contacts with the Indians in the sub-continent which either were transitory contacts due to commerce; even a possibility of some sort of small settlement in the outlying regions could be entertained.

Aśokan Rock Edicts: The first known inscriptional-epigraphic evidence for the word Yona comes from Aśokan Rock edicts – specifically Rock Edict XIII from Shāhbāzgarhi in Peshāwar of ancient north west India (now Pakistan). It mentions Antiochos (Aṅtiyako Yonarāja) as the representative of the Yona kings and then goes on to mention Yona and Kamboja etc separately as the people in his own empire.¹⁴ The Greek kings being named in the Rock Edict XIII makes clear that the dominion of the King Aśoka stretched as far as six hundred yojanas where “Yonarāja Aṅtiyoko (Antiochos II Theos of Syria, 261-246 BCE) ruled and beyond that, where the other four kings — Tulamaye (Ptolemaios II Philadelphos of Egypt, 283-246 BCE), Aṅtekine (Antigonas Gonatas of Macedonia, 278-239 BCE), Makā (Magas of Cyrene, 300-250 BCE), and Alikyaṣudale (Alexander of Epiros or Corinth, 272-258 BCE) — ruled.”¹⁵

This Rock Edict XIII (also II) of king Aśoka also affirms that the Kamboja-s, Yavana-s etc were republican or kingless nations (“araja.visyavasi yonakambojesu..”) within the Mauryan empire. They also state that the Brāhmaṇs and Śramanas were ubiquitous in the empire except among the Yonas (Lal, 2004:1116) (Vassiliades, 2004: 136). The fifth and the ninth Rock Edicts also mention Yonas as king’s subjects devoted to the Dharma (Vassiliades, 2004: 143). These edicts while surely do give strong evidence about the presence of Yavana settlements within Maurya Empire and also their proximity to the Kamboja-s but these again do not prove their substantial existence in India before Alexander. Bhandarkar tried to identify the Yonas mentioned in the Aśokan edict with Aria or Arachosia which were the two provinces ceded by Seleucuos to Chandragupta and which must have been inherited intact by Aśoka (Bhandarkar, 1921: 26). He suggested the possibility that they could have lived in a territory adjoining Gāndhāra but outside India.¹⁶

He tried to corroborate this with the findings of a particular kind of coins from ancient Indian north-west and Bactria called the Athenian ‘owls’. He was of the view that these Yonas could be the descandants of the inhabitants of the Greek city Nysa of India mentioned in the western classical sources as founded by the Greek god Dionysus when he conquered this land. As to the possibility that these Yonas in the Aśokan edicts could be the Greeks which Alexander left behind, he was of the view that as Alexander did not leave behind him any permanent settlements in or near India (Bhandarkar, 1921: 26), he only “left some Greek garrisons, certainly a province (Nysa) is not named after the race of garrisoned soldiers. It is only when a tribe or people comes in such terrific masses as to outnumber the original inhabitants that it gives its name to the province so occupied by them.”¹⁷

He found even the idea of a mere garrison imparting the name of its race to the country where it is stationed, quite inadmissible, if not ludicrous. Consequently, he opined that these Yonas signified the Yavana settlements in India or Bactria before Alexander. It certainly is a plausible scenario but the conclusion that Yavana settlements in the outlying provinces of India mentioned in the edicts was the same as Nysa mentioned in the classical sources is far from sure as it will be shown later in the post when we will discuss the characteristics of Nysa which clearly were not Greek but very much part of the Dardic Indo-Aryan or Indo-Iranian sphere. Hence, it would be prudent to treat the question of Nysa of India and the question of Greek settlements (pre or post Alexander) in India quite separately.

Western Classical Sources

§ Pre-Alexandrian Sources

Skylax: Now we move towards the western classical sources for pre-Alexandrian information that relate actual contacts between Greek travelers or writers and Indians. As previously mentioned, the Indo-Greek contacts happened through the agency of the Persian Empire; it is in the same vein that the first Greek – Skylax of Caryanda visited ancient Indian north-west on the orders of King Darius. Though some recent works do suggest the possibility that he could have visited much interior India and these recent studies suggest that the river mentioned in Skylax’s account could either be Gangā according to Panchenko or Yamunā as per Stoneman¹⁸ but they are hypothising and the north-west still remains the most probable region he visited.

He along with the other pre-Alexandrian Greek writers who mentioned India like Ctesias, Hecataios, and Herodotus also limited their descriptions to the north-western regions of the Indian sub-continent up to the border of the River Indus.¹⁹ It is important to note that none of these early writers before the time of Alexander reported any Greek presence in the region. Though, it is likely that Skylax’s visit was not long enough that he exhausted even the mountain areas of the north-west and probably never knew about Greek settlements in the region, but it would be much more plausible to argue that there were no Yavana settlements in India at the time of his visit.

Herodotus: Herodotus, who was most probably writing on the authority of previous writers refers to Indians that live near the town of Kaspátyros (=Kaspápyros) in the Paktyīké country (Histories III, 102) tentatively identified with Kusumpurā and Puṣkalāvatī, both of which were towns in ancient Gandhāra. About inhabitants of these regions, he says that their habits are very similar to those of the Bactrians, thus hinting towards a common culture that existed at least from Bactria to Gāndhāra.²⁰

On the continuity and similarity within the larger culture of the north-west of the subcontinent in the ancient times, Herodotus again provides us with some fascinating details. In III, 38, 4, he also assigns the practice of endocannibalism to Kallatiai or Callatiae — a tribe in India, much like the tribe of Padaei (Tola & Dragonetti, 1986: 167). Herodotus also accredits this practice in case of other tribes as well like that of Iranian Massagetae and Issedones (Scythian people of Asian origin) who as per him lived south-east of the Aral Sea in Central Asia. He also states that Kallatiai were very much shocked when Darius asked them whether they could burn their corpses.²¹

Ctesias: There is also a tendency to ascribe the lighter complexion of inhabitants of the north-west to post-Neolithic, Iron Age admixture from Europe, particularly to Alexander and his army and thus suggesting that the people of the region were Greek descendants. Even if set aside the Indian sources which contradict this, there is contradictory information in the western classical sources as well. Ctesias, another famous Greek who was in the court of Persian King Artaxerxes II Mnemon (r. 404–359/358) as his physician mentioned in his book Indiká that all Indians are not black and that some of them were also extremely white although fewer in number (Tola & Dragonetti, 1986: 175).

§ Post-Alexandrian Sources

Arrian: Coming to the sources for ‘Nysa in India,’ Arrian gives the most detailed description among others. He states that between the river of Kôphên (Kābul) and Indus (Sindhu), besides many other cities, there stood also the city of Nysa, which owed its foundation to Dionysus, and that Dionysus founded it when he conquered the Indians.²² Interestingly, even Arrian treats the matter with skepticism. He makes a point to note his doubt about the Theban Dionysus who setting out from either Thebes or Lydia, marched with an entire army, passed through many warlike nations unknown to the Greeks at the time, but subjugated none of those people except the Indians (M’Crindle, 1896: 79). He however, closes the matter on the credibility of the story in his account with statement, mentioned earlier whose crux is that anything is possible when it comes to the matter of divine agency.²³

Arrian then relates that the name of the president of the Nysaians was Akouphis (it is considered that as the Greek 𝛷 represents bh of Sanskrit, hence the name might have been Akubhi)²⁴ and with him came thirty deputies — his most eminent citizens and made a request to spare the city for sake of the god. Akouphis then told Alexander, ‘‘The Nysaians entreat you, O King! to permit them to be still free and to be governed by their own laws from reverence towards Dionysos; for when Dionysos after conquering the Indian nation was returning to the shores of Greece he founded with his war-worn soldiers, who were also his bacchanals, this very city to be a memorial to posterity of his wanderings and his victory, just as you have founded yourself an Alexandreia near Kaukasos, and another Alexandreia in the land of the Egyptians, not to speak of many others, some of which you have already founded, while others will follow in the course of time, just as your achievements exceed in number those displayed by Dionysos.”

‘‘Now Dionysos called our city Nysa, and our land the Nysaian, after the name of his nurse Nysa; and he besides gave to the mountain which lies near the city the name of Mêros, because according to the legend he grew, before his birth, in the thigh of Zeus. And from his time forth we inhabit Nysa as a free city, and are governed by our own laws, and are a well-ordered community. But that Dionysos was our founder, take this as a‘proof, that ivy which’ grows nowhere else in the land of the Indians, grows with us.”²⁵ The excerpts suggest that the inhabitants of the city were free; that they had cavalry and that governance was in the hands of aristocrats (Narain, 1957: 2).

Alexander then asked Akouphis to provide him with 300 of their horsemen and also best of their men from the governing body of 300 members. Interestingly, to this also Akouphis requested that instead of taking hundred of their best men, he should take twice as number of the worst men and also take 300 horsemen or even more if he desired. This he asked “so that on your (Alexander’s) returning hither you may find the city as well governed as it is now” (M’Crindle, 1896: 81). This request was also granted by Alexander with few conditions. Arrian then explains how Alexander went to the Mount Mêros where they found ivy, how the Macedonians in the party weaved themselves some ivy chaplets and crowned themselves with them, while chanting hymns to Dionysus and invoking the god by different names (M’Crindle, 1896: 81-82). Alexander then offered a sacrifice to the god Dionysus and the Macedonians raised in the god’s honour, shouts of Evoi (one of the Roman names for Dionysus), and reveled like Bacchanals celebrating their orgies.²⁶

Curtius: Curtius on the other hand, doesn’t mention any straightaway meeting between Alexander and the Nysaeans. In fact, he mentions that during the course of his march, Alexander first encamped near the city. Due to the increasing cold of  the night, when campers lit the fire and fed it with logs of wood, they might have taken slabs from the wooden coffins or the fire somehow spread to the wooden coffins which were made of old cedar wood but the result was it engulfed all of the tombs. A clamour ensued and this alerted the inhabitants of Nysa after which Alexander instituted a close blockade of the city.

Between being unsure of whether to surrender or to pursue fighting, Nysaeans surrendered in the end. This is when they told Alexander that the city was founded by Father Bacchus.²⁷ Rest of these details are more or less the same as that by Arrian. While Curtius mentions that Alexander ascended the mountain Meros with his whole army, Philostratos (II. 4) says that Alexander did not ascend the mountain but, inspite of being anxious to do so, he contented himself with offering prayers and sacrifices at the base.²⁸

The mention of wooden tombs/coffins in Curtius’ account is important because this frequently becomes the basis on which some identify Nysa of India and their descendants in the Indian sub-continent, a topic that will be discussed shortly.

Identifying Nysa:  In Gāndhāra, Ptolemy mentions a town named Nagara (Ancient Greek: Νάγαρα) which has a Greek name, ‘also Dionysopolis’ (ἡ καὶ Διονυσόπολις) and which certainly contained a Greek settlement. It has been identified with Nagarahara which was situated between the Kābul River and the Indus in present-day Afghānistān (Tarn, 1922: 168, 244). This place was also called Udyānapura, i.e. “ the city of gardens,” which the Greeks from some resemblance in the sound translated it as Dionysopolis, a compound meaning “ the city of Dionysos.”²⁹ Today, it can be identified with Nagara Ghundi, a site about 4km west of Jalālābād. There also had been suggestions to identify this Nagara-Dionysopolis with Nysa. This was apparently confirmed by a mountain called Mar-Koh (snake-hill) at some distance eastward from this site, on the opposite bank of the river, which, “if Nysa be Nagara, may be regarded as the Mount Meros which lay near it, and was ascended by Alexander…” (M’Crindle, 1896: 338). But Ptolemy was writing in 2^nd century CE and the town of Dionysopolis was most likely a later settlement that flourished after the fall of the Graeco-Bactrian cities of Ay-Khanoum and Takht-i-Sangin. Also Tarn believed that the two locations (Nagara and Nysa) were actually far away from each other.³⁰ It thus provides no contirmation for identifying Nysa.

Settlement of Branchidae in Sogdiana: A Possibility?

Was Nysa the only major settlement related to us by the western classical sources? The Indian sources, as mentioned above do suggest strong possibility that Indians and Greeks came in contact after the Achaemenid victory of Darius in India and there might have been some sort of Greek presence in the country by the time of Pāṇini. But we also saw that the Greeks are conspicuous by their absence in the description of India by Skylax and other earlier writers mentioned above, so are we in a position to speculate another location for possible Greek settlement outside India but near it?

There is some information regarding a pre-Alexandrian settlement in Bactria-Sogdiana. The proximity of these regions will put them in ideal place to be in contact with the Indians, especially through commerce and also close enough that Indians and Greeks might have actually met each other periodically. That could also explain why Pāṇini knew about them and their script. After all, he was born and lived in the vicinity of Takṣaśilā (Taxila) which apart from being a famous city for its university, was also a very important economic centre through which a lot of trade happened between India and Central Asia, the famous Silk route of the later times.

The information is about a settlement of Branchidae in Sogdiana. The Branchidae claimed to be sacred gens, descending from Branches — the traditional founder of the temple of Apollo near Miletus in Ionia. Their forefathers, according to a tradition, “had yielded up the treasure of their temple to Xerxes; this affair brought so much odium on them that they went and retired with Xerxes into the interior of Asia.”³¹ Alexander one day in 329 BCE, after his victory on the Achaemenids and before his invasion of India, left Bactria with his army, marched through the desert, crossed the Oxus, and while going north towards Samarkand, stumbled upon something unexpected. As told by Curtius (7. 5. 28–35), he came upon a town, inhabited by Branchidaea who as told above, had migrated earlier from Miletus by order of Xerxes. The possibility of situation of Branchidae town could be between Balkh and Samarkand.³² The rest of this intriguing account quoted by Panchenko in his paper can be read in this following excerpt:

“They had not ceased to follow the customs of their native land, but they were already bilingual, having gradually degenerated from their original language through the influence of a foreign tongue. Therefore they received Alexander with great joy and surrendered their city and themselves. He ordered the Milesians who were serving with him to be called together. They cherished hatred of long standing against the race of the Branchidae. Therefore the king allowed to those who had been betrayed free discretion as to the Branchidae, whether they preferred to remember the injury or their common origin. Then, since their opinions varied, he made known to them that he himself would consider what was the best to be done. On the following day when the Branchidae met him, he ordered them to come along with him, and when they reached the city, he himself entered the gate with a light-armed company; the phalanx he ordered to surround the walls of the town and at a given signal to pillage the city, which was a haunt of traitors, and to kill the inhabitants to a man. The unarmed wretches were butchered everywhere, and the cruelty could not be checked either by community of language or by the draped olive branches and prayers of the suppliants. At last, in order that the walls might be thrown down, their foundations were undermined, so that no vestige of the city might survive. As for their woods also and their sacred groves, they not only cut them down, but even pulled out the stumps, to the end that, since even the roots were burned out, nothing but a desert waste and sterile ground might be left. If this had been designed against the actual authors of the treason, it would seem to have been a just vengeance and not cruelty; as it was, their descendants expiated the guilt of their forefathers, although they themselves had never seen Miletus, and so could not have betrayed it to Xerxes (transl. by John C. Rolfe in the Loeb series).”³³

This tale is narrated not just by Curtius but other western classical sources as well. Strabo says – “they say that Xerxes founded in this area (Bactria-Sogdiana) the city of the Branchidae, who set off willingly with him from their homeland, because they handed over the possessions and the treasures of the god at Didyma” (Hammond, 1998: 341). Diodorus states: “How the Branchidae having been settled long ago by the Persians at the extremity of their kingdom, were destroyed by Alexander as traitors of the Greeks.” Hammond also considers their situation in Sogdiana, the north-easternmost province of the Persian Empire.³⁴

As to why Alexander perpetrated the massacre, Hammond explains that Alexander had particularly close ties with Apollo and, when he asked the opinion of the Milesians in his army on how he should treat the Branchidae, he found them divided in their views. So, Alexander took a personal decision and exacted retribution for the sins — against Apollo and the Greeks — of the past generation of Branchidae. All males were executed, others enslaved and the city was completely destroyed (Hammond, 1998: 344). Narain specially cites an authority like Herodotus and states that the Greeks of the city states in the Asia Minor were sometimes threatened by Persians with exile to the far eastern portions of the Achaemenid Empire and there are examples of them being settled there.³⁵ In fact, regarding the possibility of Persians deporting people, there are other examples – we do find mention of deportation of 780 Eretrians in 490 BCE (Linonel, 2005: 121).

As the recovery of Miletus suggests, the number of killed and enslaved there was rather modest, therefore a speculation can be made about the strength of the deportees to Sogdiana – the number could have been around 1000³⁶ and these deportees might have been given land in those areas to settle there and cultivate the land.

Some scholars believe that the entire story about the existence and the subsequent massacre of the Branchidae is not real but Panchenko disagrees and believes that neither the meeting itself nor the subsequent massacre was invented (Panchenko, 2002: 245). He also cites references for suggesting the possibility that Branchidae might have chosen the exile out of their own insecurity. Therefore, Xerxes accepted them as his refugees and gave them a frontier area as a settlement. So, the story of Branchidae’s exile is plausible.³⁷

The fact that a massacre of a Greek population has actually been mentioned by multiple sources, despite the strong possibility of being an extremely unpopular move, notwithstanding the stated goal of revenge for the sins of their previous generations, the tone of the events suggest that this actually happened. Panchenko raises important questions in this regard like why Alexander, on finding Greeks after such a long time in the faraway lands of Central Asia and of all options possible, would decide to massacre them. Panchenko believes that in the mention of cutting of the sacred groves by Curtius, explained above, lies the explanation of the tragedy. It would again be better to quote him to understand the plausibility of the event:

“Since Curtius’ account implies that the city of the Branchidae was located not far from the place of crossing, it is even possible that Alexander reached the city while a part of his army had yet to cross the river; then the wood cut at the sacred grove was immediately used to build rafts. Whatever the particular purpose, cutting a sacred grove was a sacrilege; it could be hardly committed without a pressing need. For the same reason it required a very strong justification. The whole career of Alexander shows that he was very conscious of what is nowadays called public relations. By this I mean not only his concern for posterity. Starting a campaign in a vaguely known and hostile country by offending a mighty god was fraught with creating panic among the soldiers as soon as they would face any misfortune. The only way of justifying the sacrilegious deed was to turn it into the avenging of another sacrilegious deed – hierosylia (Strab. 14. 1. 5). An additional charge – betrayal of the Greek cause – was not strictly pertinent, but emotionally was very efficient.”³⁸

Another evidence for the historicity of the event can be seen in the mention by the ancient writers of setting up of altars to Apollo Didymaeus by Demodamas, a general of Seleucus and Antiochus after his successes in the area (Panchenko, 2002: 248), probably to atone for the massacre perpetrated by Alexander. This story also shows the sheer contrast between the treatment meted out to the Branchidae on one hand and Nysa in India on the other. The reasons of it could be very interesting to consider, as we will shortly in this post. Therefore, a Milesian colony with a number of educated people from the upper stratum did exist during the century and a half (from 479 till 329 BC) almost next door to north-western India and practically on the future Silk Road.³⁹

When we consider the facts discussed above and that Pāṇini being a scholar from Taxila in Gāndhāra knew about Yavana-s and their script, in my opinion, we are then in a position to speculate that he might have known about this Yavana settlement in Bactria-Sogdiana. It was related before in the account of Curtius that these Greeks had already forgot some of their language and had become bilingual which also means that they remembered their language, albeit in a diluted form. Therefore, the possibility that the Yavana Pāṇini knew about were actually situated in Bactria-Sogidana is as strong as — or may be even more — the possibility of Yavanas being settled in India.

Numismatics: The Athenian ‘Owls’

Until now, we were dealing with literary sources regarding the pre-Alexandrian evidence for Greek settlements in India but know we will move on to numismatic evidence called the Athenian ‘owls’ mentioned before. These coins are usually cited in favour of the presence of Greeks in India and Central Asia before Alexander. These are a special kind of coins called the Athenian ‘owls’ that have been found in India and Central Asia, particularly around Oxus. What were these Athenian ‘owls’ and how are there findings related to the argument for presence of pre-Alexandrian Greeks in India, one might ask? In 6^th century BCE, tyrant Peisistratos (560-527 BCE) introduced in Athens a new kind of coinage – the Tetradrachm which then was made a Stater or the standard coin.⁴⁰ It was the largest Greek silver coin at the time. At first due to commercial reasons and then political reasons i.e. the Achaemenid victory over Ionia in Asia Minor, these coins found wider appeal and they were imitated widely, even in Arabia and India (Davis, 1960: 71).

These coins, the original ‘owls’ (drachm, didrachm and tetradrachm) were stamped with the head of Athena on obverse and her sacred bird, the owl — the symbol of knowledge and wisdom —  on reverse with a usual inscription of ΑΘΕ – an abbreviation (alpha, theta, epsilon) of ΑΘΗΝΑΙΩΝ, which may be translated as “of the Athenians”. The earliest imitations of these Athenian ‘owls’ were made in Egypt and southern Levant.⁴¹ P. Gardner in his paper On Some Coins of Syria and Bactria in 1880 published the findings of some imitations of these Athenian ‘owls’ with the head of Athena on the obverse and an owl on reverse.⁴² These coins were part of what was called the Oxus hoard. Rapson was also of the view that these Athenian ‘owls’ found their way to the East in the course of commerce.  It so happened that for about a century before 322 BCE, the Athenian mint was closed and the supply from it grew less (Rapson, 1898: 3). So, attempts were made to faithfully imitate and produce the originals in very northern India as in other place in the Achaemenid Empire to complete the supply.⁴³

Imitations of the Athenian ‘Owls’: Attic weight standard; Obverse – Head of Athena & Reverse – Her Symbol Owl, minted in either Bactria or Ancient Indian North-West. (Source)

Imitations of the Athenian ‘Owls’: Indian weight standard, 1. Diadrachms; 2. Drachm; Obverse – Head of Athena & Reverse – Her Symbol Owl, minted in either Bactria or Ancient Indian North-West. (Source)

It provided confirmation that coins from the Greek mainland had been making their way east since fourth century BCE (Jansari, 2018: 77). This hoard was buried in c. 390-380 BCE and had coins from Athens and Aegina, and also from the Greek cities in Asia Minor, including Soli and Phaselis (Jansari, 2018: 77) along with the imitations of the original ‘owls’. On these Athenian owls’ imitations, the ΑΘΕ was sometimes replaced by AIΓ(Whitehead, 1943). Some scholars did consider the possibility that such imitations could be post-Alexandrian, and yet, it was considered more likely that these were pre-Alexandrian.⁴⁴ Though, as per Jansari, the tradition of actually minting the imitations spread to Babylonia and Bactria after Alexander’s conquests, not before him following important eastern trade routes (Jansari, 2018: 76).

On the basis of the findings of these Athenian ‘owls’, Bhandarkar tried to prove  the presence of Greeks in some outlying province of India and connected their findings with the Nysa of India mentioned in classical sources and also the Yona-s in the Aśokan edicts. Bhandarkar considered the absence of any countermarks on some of the Athenian ‘owls’ to be an evidence that suggested the coins as native to some outlying district of India that might have been peopled by Yavanas or Greeks (Bhandarkar, 1921: 29). Narain also speculated that the Athenian ‘owls’ and other coins of the Greek cities might have been brought there both by traders and settlers.⁴⁵

In 1933, another discovery was made of a hoard of coins from Kābul called the Chaman Hazouri Hoard or the Kābul Hoard which included many bent-bar coins i.e. a kind of punch-marked coins from the north-west of the sub-continent. And, along these were found many Greek coins and some local imitations of the Greek coins (Goyal, 1999: 145) i.e. the Athenian ‘owls’. Recent opinions consider the date for the striking of the imitations to 360s BCE.⁴⁶ An Iranian imitation of an Athenian owl was among the latest of the group and based on the date of that coin of about 380 BCE, the date of the hoard was therefore fixed around that time. This also provided confirmation that in these regions, Greek coins were in circulation well before the arrival of Alexander (Bopearachchi, 2000: 310) and even the imitations were minted in the south of the Hindu Kush.

It was earlier suggested by some scholars like Narain that some of the coins (from the Oxus Hoard) were probably struck by the Greeks settled in Central Asian territories of the Achaemenid Empire before Alexander’s arrival. But the earliest coins struck in Bactria including the imitation of the Athenian owls, according to Bopearachchi did not appear before 305 BCE (Bopearachchi, 2000: 314) during the re-conquest of the Central Asian satrapies by Seleucos I (306-305 BCE)  i.e. just before the striking of proper Seleucid coinage in Bactria.⁴⁷ Therefore, the Achaemenid royal coins and the coins of the Greek cities found from Bactria-Sogdiana region were mostly imports from western regions (Bopearachchi, 2000: 309). The reason suggested is that while the territories of the erstwhile Achaemenid empire south of the Hindu Kush had a well developed monetary system, the regions north of the Hindu Kush did not start striking coins before the last decade of the 4^th century BCE.⁴⁸

The fact that relatively lesser number of the low denomination coins as oppose to the high denomination tetradrachms are found in the north of Hindu Kush regions, this supports the suggestion that trade in these areas was still predominately barter and coins were only used for important commercial exchanges (Bopearachchi, 2000: 324). In contrast to this, high amount of low denomination coins in south of the Hindu Kush explains the strong monetized economy of the area. This also helps us to understand the reason for such a late date for coin striking in regions north of the Hindu Kush as oppose to the south of the Hindu Kush. Another hoard called the Shaikhan Dehri hoard found in 2007, in the ancient city of Puśkalāvati from ancient north-west India (current Pakistan) also contained many local struck ‘bent bars’ and some new type of coins. It however, also contained one Athenian ‘owl’, a tetradrachm minted in Athens with the usual “ΑΘΕ” inscription being off-flan (Bopearachchi, 2017: 18). The possible date for this coin is between 510-485 BCE and thus, the Shaikhan Dehri hoard was confirmed to be much  older than the Kabul hoard.

Athens coin (Circa 500/490-485 BCE) discovered in Pushkalavati. This coin is the earliest known example of its type to be found so far east. (Source – WikiMedia Commons)

So, what exactly does this numismatic evidence actually signifies? The presence of pre-Alexandrian Greeks in India is therefore not a question but the question is their presence before Alexander, in such a large number enough for it to be called a settlement in the country. And can we connect it to the city of Nysa mentioned by western classical sources? While it has been argued that this suggests Greek settlements in India, it is still, in my opinion insufficient evidence. What it does give ample proof of is that commercial relations between India-Central Asia (Bactria-Sogdiana) and the Greek world were strong.

The Indian side of the Hindu Kush, as already mentioned above had well established practice of minting coins, unlike north of the Hindu Kush.  Therefore, when the supply of the Athenian ‘owls’ decreased, with repercussions for trade in the Persian markets, their imitations were made by the Indian potentates (as was done at various places in the Achaemenid Empire as well), with a probability of some guidance from some Greeks in the Persian Empire or maybe they were a result of purely indigenous attempts to replicate the designs of the original Athenian owls’ that were circulating due to commerce in the Indian north-west and Central Asia.

One might now ask, if it has been suggested by some studies mentioned above that the trade in Central Asia was not enough for them to mint these imitations; that proper minting only started in the region after Seleucus I and the earlier imitations are mostly examples of the coins that reached Bactria-Sogdiana due to commerce, would that not contradict the conclusion reached before in this post that there was a settlement of Branchidae in Sogdiana? And why could they not mint these imitations? This, in my opinion, as the current evidence stands, could be  because the settlement of Branchidae was a migratory one and therefore, much less connected with the resources, the markets of rich Asia Minor; they most likely did not have the resources to mint such coins. But this is only a speculation and the results reached could change with new archaeological-numismatic finds and studies.  

The Question of ‘Greek Descent’

The claims that these Greek settlements, either Alexandrian or pre-Alexandrian left such an imprint on the Indian sub-continent that some tribes believe themselves to be their descendants has been alluded to at the start of the post. Why is that? And how is that connected to the ‘Nysa in India’? To explain the point further – the ancient Indian north-west, the main region with which this post is concerned, is also habitat of some of the most peculiar tribes, with fascinating culture and traditions. In the current times, the Kalash tribe in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwā province of Pakistan represents remnants of such people. They belong to the Dardic Indo-Aryan group of people. Before late nineteenth century, the Kalash were part of a much more widespread zone of the Dardic Indo-Aryan indigenous culture that included the erstwhile Kāfiristān region of Afghānistān whose people were called the Kāfir-s i.e. the infidels. Despite the violent rise of Islam in the region, for a very long time, they had preserved their indigenous religion and culture.

However in 1896-7, they were forcefully converted to Islam by Amir of Afghānistān, Abdur Rahim Khan (Cacopardo, 2011: 53) and the region was renamed as Nuristān, in their view — the land of light i.e. Islam. The Kalash survived because they were on the Indian side (now Pakistani side) of the Durand Agreement of 1893 between Afghānistān and the British Colonial Government of India. Interestingly, there even were claims by some of these people themselves (including the Kalash and the erstwhile Kāfirs) that they were the descendants of the Greeks. Though, important to note that they were claiming their descent not from the tradition of Nysa but through either Alexander or his generals or members of his entourage left in India.

§ The Genetic Studies

Before moving further in analysis of these narratives, explaining the similarities and what could be the reasons of these parallelisms and their various aspects, it is important to declare at the outset that such claims have been found baseless after various genetic studies done on the topic. A genetic study done back in 2004 found that Kalash were genetically distinct and that the Burusho and Pathan populations are genetically close to each other and the Greek population. The study claimed that – “the admixture estimates suggest a small Greek contribution to the genetic pool of the Burusho and Pathan and demonstrate that these two northern Pakistani populations share a common Indo-European gene pool that probably predates Alexander’s invasion.”⁴⁹ 

Another genetic study done in 2007 of “the Y diversity within Greeks and three Pakistani populations – the Burusho, Kalash and Pathan – who claim descent from Greek soldiers,” compared Y lineages within these populations and re-evaluated their acclaimed Greek origins. The study excluded a large Greek contribution to any Pakistani population, confirming previous studies.⁵⁰ But, the study claimed strong evidence in support of the Greek origins for a small proportion of Pathans.

New results from more advanced genetic study in 2015 found no evidence of any recent admixture in the Kalash. It stated that “despite the claims that the Kalash are descendants of Alexander’s soldiers, this was not supported by Y chromosomal analysis of the Kalash by this study.” Instead, they observed that “the Kalash share a substantial proportion of drift with a Paleolithic ancient Siberian hunter-gatherer, who has been suggested to represent a third northern Eurasian genetic ancestry component for present-day Europeans.”⁵¹ The latest genetic research in 2019 by Narsimhan et al. found that the Kalash had the highest ANI (Ancestral North Indian) ancestry proportion.⁵²

Therefore, successive genetic studies unfounded the claims of any pre or post Alexandrian or Greek descent in the Kalash population and found the claims of any recent substantial Greek admixture to be baseless.  However, many earlier scholars since the nineteenth century had suggested that these tribes of the Kāfirs and the Kalash represented the Nysa  of India mentioned in the western classical sources. What were these similarities that gave them such impressions? And, if these people are not connected to the Greeks (as confirmed by successive genetic studies), then how can we explain these commonalities?

Explaining the Parallelisms

When the British encountered these tribes particularly the Kāfirs, their habits, culture, religion and their ‘European’ physical appearance intrigued them. Fairly early on, there were speculations by these British travelers, the writers and scholars that they could be connected to the Nysa of India mentioned in the western classical sources. There were some similarities with the culture of this region and some finds that seemingly supported their connection to the Nysa of India founded by Dionysus. Interestingly, the earlier claims were mostly related to the Kāfirs and not the Kalash as the Kalash tribe was by and large ignored before and came into the focus of studies only in the 20^th century and even in these  later studies, any Greek connection – Alexander or not was mostly not mentioned. The claims of any Greek connection to the Kalash are very recent.⁵³

The practice of the Kāfirs of keeping the dead body of the departed in a wooden coffin without burial at the outskirts of the village (Wilber, 1962: 51) reminded the earlier scholars of the wooden coffins mentioned by Curtius with regard to the Nysaeans. The funerary customs of the Siāh  Posh  tribe — the former Kāfirs inhabiting the Bashgal Valley — were documented  by  M. Mohun Lāl who accompanied  Lieutenant Burnes on his journey. The following details were based on  the  oral  report  of a  Muslim mufti who visited the tribe:

“The funeral of the Siah Posh people is triumphantly solemnized. The corpse is generally attended by young men, who sing, skip, dance, and play upon drums. The deceased, unwashed is carried away upon the shoulders of men, in a large box, as among the Muhammedeans. It is taken upon the top of a high mountain, and put open to the sun. They sacrifice a cow, and give a feast to the attendants of the funeral. Then they return home, and do not weep at all.’ After sixty days, when the body is putrefied, and eaten by birds, the women of the family go in an assembly upon the mountain. They pick up the bones, and after washing them in a stream, they bring them home, sit round them, and then mourn for a short time; after this, the men come and convey the bones, they say, “This is the heaven for you.”⁵⁴

Again the mention of wooden coffins this early on in the nineteenth century gave fire to the narrative that these Kāfirs were descendants of the Greeks of Nysa. A carved wooden effigy of the deceased was placed in the cemetery amid feasting and dancing continued for two to three days.⁵⁵  The same is in the case of Kalash where they also use wooden coffins. The importance of the wooden boxes however, is also attested in the traditions of the native culture of the Gilgit region which connects them to larger Dardic traditions. In the Gilgit traditions, cremation was practiced in some areas, the ashes being buried in wooden boxes or earthen jars (Jettmar, 2002: 21).  They also believed that witches rode on wooden boxes and were believed to devour the souls of their neighbours, even their own sons during black masses.

“In such secret meetings they were assisted by a henchman, feigning reluctance, who had to slaughter the alter ego of the victim shaped as a goat. On the other hand, the witches themselves were haunted by another type of spiritual specialist who might occasionally succeed in saving the endangered person otherwise destined to die after a few days” (Jettmar, 2002: 20).

The importance of juniper in the rituals of Kāfir-Kalash tribes has been used by some to connect them to the ‘Dionysiac’ tradition. The Kāfirs also kept goats, cattle and until recently sacrificed cows and goats to their gods;⁵⁶ this practice again suggested the possibility to some scholars that they could be related to Dionysus because goat sacrifice was a big part of worship of Dionysus. The goat-ibex cult always played a big role in the religion of the Kāfirs. The Kalash also gave huge importance to the goats in their religion (Parkes, 1987: 645). The reason is that goat husbandry was always much more prominent in the region than that of cattle. While the Kāfirs did use to sacrifice cows; in the Kalash tradition, cattle are considered unclean and impure animals and so the consumption of beef, cow’s milk and butter were avoided.⁵⁷

Markhor (capra falconeri) – a giant wild caprid with beautiful spiraling horns are still considered by the Kalash people to be extremely sacred. Such is the value of these animals that goat-markhor horns are one the most prominent motifs of the Kalash ritual iconography (Parkes, 1987: 647). Interestingly, the ritual importance of juniper and goat – both the ibex and markhor (collectively called mayaro) is well attested in the Shin traditions of Gilgit as well.⁵⁸

Therefore, being situated in the mountainous region, environment played a big role in increasing the importance of goats or ibex. Their significance in the culture and art of the region can be explained by the role that these animals play in the economy of these tribes which consequently led to their religious importance as well. The growth of ivy in these regions, as mentioned above, was also cited by the western classical authors as the sign that Dionysus founded the city of Nysa — growth of ivy in the region of erstwhile Kāfirs-Kalash therefore became a point that related them to Nysa. The prominent use of wine in the culture of these tribes contributed to more claims by some scholars that there was a genuine connection. However, as intriguing as it is to see similarities of these cultures with the traditions of the Dionysiac worship, these similarities can be easily explained as representing the indigenous religion of this region which has its roots in the Dardic Indo-Aryan or Indo-Iranian continuum (Cacopardo, 2011: 70).

Even back in the nineteenth century, these native bases were considered by many scholars when the outcome of the genetic studies was not known and many disagreed with the theories that they had any Greek or recent European roots. They found roots of these traditions were not in the Greek traditions but the ancient Indo-Aryan/Iranian culture.  For example, Wilson⁵⁹ in his translation of the Viṣṇu Purāṇa had noticed the similarity in the name of the Caumojees (Kam-Kamtoz)⁶⁰ of Kāfiristan to the ancient Kāmboja-s who he thought may have retreated to the mountains before the advance of the Turk tribes.

Notwithstanding the nativity of these traditions, the art of the region was still claimed by some to be related to the Greek traditions of Dionysus. The predominant art of the region of not just these tribes but including the entire Swāt valley (the earlier territory of Kamboja and Gāndhāra) has been called ‘Dionysiac’ for their prolific use of wine and ‘Bacchalic scenes.’ But, is it really ‘Dionysiac’?  As wine consumption and the other related art is well attested in the context of the Western classical world and medieval Irān (Filigenzi, 2019: 56), this resulted in a tendency to see such art form in the Swāt valley to be hierarchically dependent on the western classical world. It is a fact that wine consumption seems to have existed in the Swāt valley from a long time as supported by the archaeological finds of the region. The following excerpt from Filigenzi’s paper is helpful in this regard:

“The assemblages of the proto-historic graveyards of Swat (c. 1700–300 BCE) include a large number of the so called “brandy-bowls,” i.e. drinking vessels characterised by hemispherical, globular or carinated bodies on a high foot. Although no traces of substances were detected, their connection to the ceremonial practice of libation is nonetheless manifest. Some sort of intoxicating liquid was indeed consumed in proto-historic Swat, probably beyond the funerary context as well.”⁶¹

Then there is also the evidence of the archaeological grains including grapevine from the settlements in the region (Filigenzi, 2019: 60). Archaeo-botanists estimate that in the Early Neolithic times, the ancient north west of the Indian sub-continent must have played an important role in the domestication of the wild grapevine. After all, wild grapevine is still found in the region (Filigenzi, 2019: 60). Filigenzi mentions that palaeo-botanical evidence of cultivated grapes is recorded in the Indian subcontinent from the third millennium BCE onwards.

There have been found many stone tanks, interestingly near rock shelters (that cover a wide period from the Bronze age to even 10^th-12^th century).⁶² The shelters have been connected with transhuman pastoralists as Filigenzi calls them like those of the Dardic culture.  The stone tanks are of both kinds — winepresses and the vats. Hence, there is a sound reasoning behind the statement of Filigenzi when she states that consumption of wine in Swāt was a component of the normal ambit of economic and cultural life, therefore it will be much better to use a neutral phrase of ‘revelry scenes’ to describe such art from Swāt instead of ‘Dionysiac’.⁶³ The connection of wine and gods of Kāfirs of Hindu Kush is amply explained by Filigenzi:

“..an important cult place in honour of Indr, also used for meetings of important men, was the Indr-ta in Wama, in Southern Nuristan. Indr is the Kafir version of the Vedic Indra. Like the latter, he is the ruler of the atmosphere and atmospheric phenomena, and as such is connected in Kafiristan with rainbows and earthquakes (Jettmar 1986, 64). As originally connected to ritual consumption of.., Indr is also the god of wine and owns vineyards (Jettmar 1986; Chandra 1998, 151). In particular, the Indrakun garden, an orchard located high above the Pech River, where fruit trees grow embraced by wild vines, traces its origin back to Indr, who, according to the local folklore, carved the vats into the boulders himself and visits the garden each summer.” (Filigenzi, 2019: 74-75).

The grape harvest was then celebrated with a festival in honour of Indr in Indra-ta. The celebration involved ample use of wine, goat sacrifice, dancing and singing and merriment. Another excerpt from Filigenzi’s paper explains the festivities:

“On this occasion, a large cult image of Indr was taken from his temple (Indr-ama) out into the village and placed in the centre of the Indr-ta, on a boulder that served as a base, next to which was a sacred tree (already dead at the time of Edelberg’s visit in 1948). Two long rows of stones were used as sitting places for high-ranking men who used to drink much wine stored in the Indr-ama. Between the rows of stones there was a flat dancing ground and, in the vicinity, four stone wine vats (watkuna). The effigy of Indr was honoured by pouring wine on it and by sacrificing to it several he-goats and one or two oxen, whose blood was thrown on the sacrificial fire while priests sung hymns.”

Interestingly, a temple of Dionysus on the mountain of Nysa (a mountain here; not a city) has also been described by Appolonius of Tyana who visited India in 1^st century CE. The festivities described have close similarities with the Indrakun tradition. Though, the text has been considered unreliable, yet Filigenzi considers this an evidence of persistence of the connection that was made between the ‘god of wine’ and Dionysus. (Filigenzi, 2019: 75). Another intriguing fact that Filigenzi mentions testifies to the presence of concept of ‘god of wine’ in the Gāndhār region when Alexander was in India.

“Falk (2009, 65) recalled the Gandharan god Soroadeios (a high ranking yakṣa?) mentioned by Chares of Mitylene, a Greek historiographer who followed Alexander in his military expedition into Asia. Of Chares’ Stories about Alexander (Peri Alexandron historiai), only a few fragments survive in citations and excerpts. From the relevant passage, quoted by Athenaios of Naukratis (Deipnosophistai 1.48.64), we know that Chares translated the name Soroadeios (i.e. the Greek phonetic version of an unknown Indian original) as oinopoios, ‘wine maker.'”⁶⁴

The connection of Indr of the Kāfir religion with the Vedic Indra was very obvious but even the visiting god of the Kalash religion in the sacred time of Chaumos — from Sanskrit meaning four months — who is called Balimain (Cacopardo, 2011: 74) has emphatic connections with Vedic Indra. Balima (bal’ima) as per scholar Cacopardo would be an epithet meaning ‘powerful’ borrowed from Kati, while In would stand for Indra, so the Balimain would mean ‘powerful Indr.’ In fact the Kalasha themselves address Balimain as Indr in songs and invocations.⁶⁵ There is no doubt that clear similarities exist between these native religious beliefs of the ancient Indian north-west and the Dionysus traditions. For example, visit of Balimain is brief because he departs at the end of Chaumos, while the god of wine Dionysus was believed to stay for the winter on earth to leave only in spring (Cacopardo, 2011: 74)…. Balima-In, like Dionysos, is a hermaphrodite: he is represented as male on the right side and female on the left side.⁶⁶

It’s fascinating to note that these traits of Balima-In and Dionysus are also well known and much prominent part of god Śiva. Dionysus and Śiva also share more obvious similarities with both of them being the lords of animals. The bull is also important part of traditions of Śiva and is connected to Dionysus at the same time; the tradition of being related to intoxicating drinks is also common to both. Interestingly, there is also an example of carved Śiva from the Yungang Grottoes in China, curiously depicted holding grapes thus suggesting a Sogdian connection of Śiva with grapes (and possibly wine?). At this point, readers may remember that Herodotus had already specifically related, as mentioned above, the similarities in the habits of Bactrians and ancient the north-west Indians (ancient Kamboja and Gandhāra). So, there is a trail of similarities that can be traced between these regions and their religious beliefs from India to Central Asia (like the importance of goat/ibex, wine, bull, etc) right from the ancient times.

A carved depiction of god Śiva holding grapes from the Yungang Grottoes in Shanxi, China (5th century CE). (Source) (WikiMedia Commons Link)

The connection of these gods with wine is a fascinating point for research. These peculiar similarities of the Kāfir-Kalash culture with the European culture, as per Cacopardo suggest some very ancient connection between them including the festival cycles, the use of juniper, the music etc. but he admits that these are only random parallels at best and a detailed study of European folk traditions will be needed to draw some conclusions.⁶⁷

While the tradition of Dionysus conquering India on his way to the Greek shores has been mentioned before, there is also another very intriguing and lesser known tradition that Cacopardo has shed light on. Euripides is the first to mention that Dionysos was actually born in India and had travelled to Greece after a childhood spent in Nysa or on Mount Meros.⁶⁸ Cacopardo cites on the authority of Grossato that based on the available archaeological and ethnobotanical evidence, there is a strong possibility of the tradition of Dionysos and his lesser known legend of Indian origin to actually signifying the route along which the vine and viticulture expanded west from Central Asia, especially because this expansion coincides pretty well with the route followed by the god (Cacopardo, 2011: 76). To explain the point regarding the ‘Wine-Route’, it will be better to quote an excerpt from Cacopardo’s paper:

“At the present state of research it seems that the cultivation of the vine first developed south of the Caucasus where the wild sub-species of the vitis vinifera Linnei, the vine at the origin of 99% of the wine produced today, still prospers. This vine, however, is found as far east as Tajikistan, i.e. just north of the Hindu Kush. The itinerary that was later to become the famed Silk-route, Grossato (Ib.) further suggests, may earlier have been the Wine-route. If we consider that an autochthonous vine – vitis nuristanica Vassilcz – is found in Nuristan (Neubauer 1974; Edelberg & Jones 1979: 35) and that the southern slopes of the chain would have been just as well (if not better) fit for the production of grapes (cf. Olmo 2000), it appears that our area may be, if not the very first, at least one of the first wine-producing zones in Eurasia; that Nysa was in the Paropamisos, i.e. the Hindu Kush, is on the other hand part of the myth. The circumstance that the goat is one of the two animals more closely associated with Dionysos could be taken as a further indication in this direction: the Hindu Kush is apparently the home of the breed of wild goat which is considered to be the progenitor of all domestic goats (Snoy 1959: 528). In this context, I believe, the similarities between Balimain and Dionysos could be explained by their connection with wine. Rather than of an influence reaching the Hindu Kush from Greece, no matter when, I believe we should think in this case of the exact opposite, i.e. an Asian influence reaching Greece. The route followed by Dionysos would in this case refer to the itinerary along which viticulture spread west. This does not imply of course that the figure of Dionysos should be seen as a direct development of that of Balimain. It may be, rather, that both divine figures may stem from a remote religious humus common to Greece and the Indian world, that may be also at the roots of Śaivism (Cacopardo, 2011: 77).” 

Regarding the art from these regions of ancient Kamboja and Gandhāra and their depiction of goat sacrifices,⁶⁹ they also seem to have a close connection with the practices of the Kafirs-Kalash tribes of the Hindu Kush. Two fascinating sculptures have been found (Filigenzi, 2019: 76) from the region which curiously have the representation of both these important aspects that we have considered – wine and goat sacrifice. One is of a devī holding a beaker and a severed head of a goat and another one (a small stele) probably of a male deity, also depicted with similar traits – a goblet and a severed head of a goat!

First Image: A god holding a goblet and the severed head of a goat, from Bīr-koṭ-ghwaṇḍai. Second Image: A goat-headed goddess holding a beaker and the severed head of a goat. (Source – Filigenzi, 2019)

The Gandharan art which has been described as ‘Dionysiac’ surely borrowed and learnt from the western attributes of art, particularly dominant  was the Greek element due to the long (almost two centuries) of Greek stronghold in the region, but the traditions that were portrayed in that art were purely local. The Greek tradition according to which Dionysus was born out of the thigh (Meros in Greek) of Zeus and the fact that there were some mountains sacred to Kalash, one of them being Tirich Mir was considered by some as another point which connected these far away people to each other through kinship. But, these mountains are part of the native mythology for the people of these valleys. They are considered to be the favored seats of the fairies, as mentioned by Witzel in his study of the Kalash religion, especially the impressive, 7708 m high pyramid of the Kailāsa-like Tirich Mir in the North of Chitral (~ Meru KaṭhB, Meros Arrian, Anabasis 1.6; Sumeru, Pāli Sineru; cf. *devameru, Shina díamer = Nanga Parbat).⁷⁰

Witzel is also of the opinion that the Hindu Kush and Vedic mythology, ritual, and festivals, in spite of many layers of developments and mutual influences, tend to explain each other very effectively. And he also suggests that the Kalash religion has many aspects of the Ṛgvedic religion. In fact, the practice of using wooden coffins and exposing the interned dead bodies to the sun seems to be much more influenced by the ancient Iranian traditions than the Greek.

History of the Claims of ‘Greek Descent’

When it is confirmed that the Kafir-Kalash traditions and culture have their ancient independent roots in the native Dardic, Indo-Aryan/Indo-Iranian culture of the north-west of the Indian sub-continent, it is even more intriguing to think why these tribes themselves have made claims of being descendants of either Alexander himself or his generals and soldiers that he left behind in India. Chronologically, the first time we hear of the claim by a people from the East of being Alexander’s descendants is in the accounts of the famous Venetian traveler – Marco Polo. Scholar Cacopardo informs us that this claim was made by the Shahs of Badakhshan who considered themselves direct descendants from Alexander’s marriage with the daughter of Darius, and for that reason all the kings of that line called themselves Zulkarnein, in memory of their great ancestor (Cacopardo, 2011: 48).

Babur in his work Babur Nama also confirms the claim and says that these rulers descended from Iskander Filkus,⁷¹ Filkus/Filikus being the Oriental corruption of the name Philip, and the father of Alexander. However, this royal dynasty of Badakhshan was later replaced at the end of the 16^th century by an Uzbek dynasty who used the title of Mir, instead of Shah. The members of this family when spread out after the fall of their rule, they took with them the claim of being Alexander’s descendants. Mirza Haidar Dughlat (1895: 107), the author of Tarikh-i-Rashidi, who was a relative and contemporary of Babur also states the connection with Sikander Zulkarnain  (Cacopardo, 2011: 49). The British authors of the nineteenth century also continued to make these claims of Greek ancestry.

Again similar claims were made by the rulers form nearby principalities like the ruler of Darwaz and the ruler of Talikhan (Cacopardo, 2011: 49). This continued until it reached a point when all the princes of upper Oxus were claiming descent from Alexander. Cacopardo is of the opinion that the source of all these claims was ultimately one and the same – the royal dynasty of Badakhshan.⁷² South of the Hindu Kush, the claims of Greek ancestry were made in the twentieth century by Mir of Nager. As there was no trace of such claims in the oral traditions of the place, Cacopardo suggests that it could have been made to seek favours from the British (Cacopardo, 2011: 49). Similar lack of coherence was seen in the case of claims from Skardu which seems to have arisen from the tradition that Skardu as a town was established by Alexander and was called Iskanderia by the natives. The tradition of the town being established by Alexander was later transformed to ancestral claims (Cacopardo, 2011: 50).

Another connection to Alexander is found in Tarikh-i-Hunza, an early 19th century work by Muhammad Riza Beg, where a Shah Rais, ruler of Hunza, Nager and Gilgit is associated with Alexander the Great and is said to have been nominated as a governor of Gilgit by him. This claim very interestingly is also traced in the end by Cacopardo to the royal dynasty of Badakhshan to whom this Shah Rais was actually related. As mentioned above, these dethroned royals and their relatives found their way south of the Hindu Kush after the usurpation of their throne in Badakhshan by the Uzbeks (Cacopardo, 2011: 50).

Again, like a fountain head, the same source can be found in the claims by the last ruling dynasty of Chitral, the Kator lineage.⁷³ As most of these claims are now found related to the dethroned Badakhshan royal family, another independent source for the Greek ancestry claim is traced from the regions of Swat and Bajour whose princes, who styled themselves Sultani, claimed descent from a daughter of Alexander (Cacopardo, 2011: 51). The mention of this is apparently found in Ain-i-Akbari of Abul Fazl. These princes were later dethroned by Yusufzai Pathans.  A late eighteenth century account also states about a village in the Bajaur region – “…a small village called Kanbat, in which a few hundred families of the former race – the Arab – dwell, who are styled Iskandarì.”⁷⁴ The root of all these claims going back to the Marco Polo account has to be seen in the context of the religion of Islam. To explain this, Cacopardo quotes a very interesting extract from Olaf Caroe which gives a context to these oral traditions:

“almost certainly have their origin in the body of western classical learning translated into Arabic in the days of the Abbasids of Baghdad, and are part of the Yunani or Greek lore which so largely influenced Islamic literae humaniores. It was thus that the great deeds of Sikandar Zul-qarnain – Alexander of the Two Horns – became a part of the folk-lore of the Muslim world.”

This clearly provides a reason for the title Zul-qarnain used by the major source for the Greek ancestry claims – the royal Badakhshan family because Zul-qarnain is an Arabic epithet used for Alexander by the Qurán. Therefore, the ultimate connection of these claims is found in the Islamic traditions and folklores. Coming particularly to the claims by the erstwhile Kafirs, Cacopardo states that Mountstuart Elphinstone, the first British envoy to the King of Kabul in 1809, when heard about these people (who were still polytheistic), he considered the possibility of them being the same people mentioned in Ain-i-Akbari, who traced their descent from Alexander. He sent an envoy there to confirm his hunch, which he himself later found baseless in his book.⁷⁵

But, the topic was intriguing enough to have captured the imagination of Europeans about some long lost tribe from Europe in such distant lands. As earlier mentioned, even in the nineteenth century, various scholars found the evidence lacking and stated their opinions clearly against such possibility. But, the kinship theory continued to be suggested by many authors.  And the speculation that these people could even be the descendents of the Nyseans also found some traction at the time. In fact, the Kafirs themselves seem to have taken on this idea, being enamoured by this possibility as is shown in one instance where a delegation of Kafirs presented themselves in front of the British in a military camp near Jalalabad in 1839 to Sir William Macnaghten and claimed relationship with the fair skinned British (Wilber, 1962: 51). Cacopardo suggests that they most likely were influenced to assume such connection by their common traits of a fairer complexion, of drinking wine, and of not being Muslims (Cacopardo, 2011: 54). But he also points out that they already might have been prone to this belief due to their Islamic neighbours who were the first to find them similar to the Europeans.⁷⁶

In fact, earlier whenever investigations were done in order to find their origins, it was mostly believed by the Kafirs themselves that they were actually of Arabic descent from the Quraish tribe, an obvious fictitious claim found throughout the Hindu Kush-Karakoram which as scholar Cacopardo explains has a fascinating reason behind it (Cacopardo, 2011: 56):

“The true meaning of the legend is in fact a statement of ancient Kafir ancestry because the supposed connection is through Abu Jahel, a member of the Quraish tribe who was an arch-enemy of Islam”⁷⁷

The fact that the oral traditions of the Nuristani people made no mention of any Greek ancestry also strengthens the view that the claim could very well have been a later assumption. Another factor that might have influenced such later claims against the established oral tradition among Nuristanis was the need for survival. By the end of the 19^th century, they had got the wind of an impending raid on them by a large force of the Pathans and they demanded protection from it by sending a delegation to Ghulam Haider, the general who later was responsible for converting the region. The delegation, Cacopardo relates had stated that their tribe is of European descent, their ancestors having been brought from Europe into Kafiristan by Alexander the Great. This was clearly an attempt at the time to protect their tribe by connecting them to much more powerful Europeans. Many Europeans by the last decade of the 19^th century had already visited the Kafirs and the constant prodding to their origins and possibilities suggested by these visits might have made the Kafirs aware of the theories of their European origin amongst these foreigners.

Cacopardo therefore states that these theories, coupled with the increasing political stature of the British and the already prevalent Islamic folklore; all of it might very well have induced the Kafirs to use “ the Alexandrian legend because they thought it could have been expedient, in that perilous circumstance, to present themselves as related to the powerful lords of the Indian empire.”⁷⁸ There is one more detail that suggests a relatively recent date for these European/Greek kinship claims. Taimur, the invader who actually passed through the region in 1398 CE, made sure to boast that he had reached and conquered a people who had not been conquered by anyone before, not even Alexander! (Cacopardo, 2011: 56) This statement of Taimur is interestingly corroborated by the route which Alexander took in his campaign. On the authority of various scholars like Stein and Caroe, Cacopardo has mentioned that Alexander never actually advanced into mountains further north of Bajaur and Swat.⁷⁹

And therefore, could not have encountered these particular tribes. However, this culture was surely much more widespread in the region in ancient times and he might have encountered some other tribe who were also natives of the region and practitioners of the very same Dardic, Indo-Aryan/Indo-Iranian religion. In their oral tradition, Kalash refer to a vague memory of a migration from the south west under a king called Shalak Shah who came from Tsyam (Cacopardo, 2011: 58). For the historicity of this Tsyam connection, Cacopardo is of the opinion that this land called Tsyam or Sham could most likely refer to northern Chitral and therefore the legend might be related to an ancient expulsion of a particular Kalash group from Northern Chitral due to an expansion of the neighbouring Khowar speakers. (Cacopardo, 2011: 61).They themselves believed that Kalash had earlier held sway over Chitral and were eventually defeated by the Rais Mehtars.

It seems certain that earlier Kalash were present in a larger area and were gradually either exterminated or assimilated and that the movements occurred in wake of the rise of Islam in the region. Cacopardo informs that many researchers studying the Alexander connection of the Kalash tribe were mostly informed by one renowned informant who told a story related to one ‘Sikander Mukada’ with golden horn, clearly suggesting borrowing from the local widespread Islamic folklore. This informant then could be the sources of all the sudden outbursts of the Alexander ancestry claim that was earlier restricted to the Kafirs (Nuristanis) because the Kalash were relatively understudied, as mentioned before. It is important to note at this point that even in the oral traditions of the Kalash tribe, there is no unanimity regarding their origin. The Tsyam, as an original homeland, is mentioned only in Bumburet and Rumbur regions (Cacopardo, 2011: 62) and even in these regions, the knowledge of Tsyam was not general. To illustrate, one respected elder as per Cacopardo had no knowledge of any ancient migration and believed that they were the real inhabitants (bhumk’i = of the same soil) of that valley.”⁸⁰

Even the linguistics have confirmed that the languages of these regions were rooted in the Indo-Aryan/Indo-Iranian group and keeping this in mind, any similarities between Kalashamon and Greek would be explained as deriving from the ancient vertical connection that passes through Sanskrit, and not from a horizontal one due to more recent contacts or migrations (Cacopardo, 2011: 59). As there is much strong relation between the languages of Kalash and Khowar and on these linguistic grounds, it could be that these people have been in Chitral from second millennium BCE (Cacopardo, 2011: 66), again negating any scope for the Greek ancestry claims.

“…it is rather to be seen as the last living example of a cultural and religious complex that was formerly spread throughout the Hindu Kush/Karakorum chain; reaching as far as the borders of Ladakh in the East. (Cacopardo, 2011: 70) and extending to the footholds of the mountains in the South, and to the northern slopes of the main ridge in the North.”⁸¹

There even exist similarity and connection in the social system of the Kalash and the general ancient Indian social practises. In the first place the fundamental exogamic rule governing the formation of lineages, reminds closely of the Indian sapinda system (Cacopardo, 2011: 72). There even was a class of serfs and artisans who were deemed impure in their culture and with whom commensality was not allowed. Thus, there is ample evidence that confirms the Kafir-Kalash people as indigenous to the region with some archaic European connection that certainly cannot be due to either Alexander or any of his soldiers left behind in the military garrisons.

Alexander & his Ambitions of Divinity

Keeping these conclusions in mind, it is fascinating to think that the ‘Nysa in India’ found such exhilarating appeal in the western classical culture. Why was that? Why did Alexander on some mere similarities believe this Dionysus connection with such ease? Why was he trying to provide credence to an existing tradition? Was it for his benefit? If yes, then what did he hope to achieve by doing that and did he actually achieve his goals? In this last section of the post, we again come to the same sources that started these claims of a city of Nysa, established by Dionysus in India and we will try to understand Alexander’s motives.

For this we will have to understand what Alexander’s lineage was. He was considered to be a descendant of Heracles through his father. He was a member of the Argead royal house of Macedon, founded by Caranus, was descended from the Temenids of Argos themselves descended from Heracles (Diod. 17.4.1) (Leitch, 2018: 110). And through his mother, he was considered a descendant of Achilles. His origins played an important role in many of his decisions later in his campaigns. When we understand the importance of Heracles and the related traditions, we will understand why outdoing Dionysus by surpassing his conquests became so important for Alexander, particularly later in the Indian campaign. To analyze his motivation, his goals and his beliefs, not just in the divine legends but ultimately in his own divinity, the following incidents and events help us a lot. And then only we can comprehend the importance of the legend of Nysa in India for him.

In this regard, Alexander’s efficient use of what we might call kinship diplomacy will be a good place to start. From the accounts of Diodorus (Diod. 17.4.1) and Justin (Justin 11.3.1), it is clear that Alexander used kinship diplomacy as early as in case of the Thessalian League⁸² and this was before the start of his campaign in Asia. One of the reasons was to make his kingship “more palatable” and to increase his power in the Hellenistic world (Leitch, 2018: 110). Another example is from Troy – “Alexander employed kinship diplomacy with the Trojans by using a connection with them through Andromache, from whom he was descended through his mother.”⁸³

There is no doubt that Alexander was an exceptional leader to his army and understood the importance of morale of the forces. This can be seen  when Alexander offered a sacrifice to, Priam, the king of Troy during the Trojan War (Leitch, 2018: 111). Historians believe that Alexander did this in order to appease Priam so as not to jeopardize the Macedonian campaign and there is also the possibility that it was done to quell the fears of his men.⁸⁴ In the subsequent paragraphs of the post, we will see how Alexander tried to use the legend of Nysa in India as a morale boost for his army. In fact, according to Curtius, as early as the battle of Issus where Alexander would defeat Darius for the first time, he encouraged his men by promising them that they would ‘one day traverse the bounds set by Hercules and Liber (Dionysus) to subdue not only the Persians but all the races of the earth.’ (Stoneman, 2019: 84).

The difference between the manner in which Alexander treated the two ancient cities of Soli and Mallus, in Cilicia near Issus is also helpful to understand his mindset. Soli was fined for supporting the Persian cause while in the case of Mallus, he remitted the tribute which the city paid to Darius because as per Arrian – “Mallus was a colony of Argos and he himself claimed to be descended from the Argive Heracleidae”,⁸⁵ therefore Mallus was given the advantage of being Heraclid origin. Similar use of kinship with the gods reduces in number when Alexander entered the non-Greek world. Yes there were some important incidents in Tyre and Egypt where the gods Melkart and Ammon were respectively identified with Herakles and Zeus by the Greeks (Leitch, 2018: 111) but kinship diplomacy was very limited. Another example is of his Persian campaign where despite the believed Persian connection due to Perseus, a descendant of Herakles, the kinship diplomacy was not employed.

As these other ancient civilizations worshipped their own gods, the use of kinship diplomacy despite the connections believed by the Greeks would not have been fruitful (Leitch, 2018: 111-112). Then we see a major shift in his decision of the dismissal of the troops of the League of Corinth.

“By dismissing these troops, Alexander acknowledged that he had accomplished what he set out to do, at least in the eyes of the League of Corinth, and anything from here on out was simply unnecessary. Alexander was doing this for himself now and that’s why kinship myth makes reappearance in this campaign and is different from before.”⁸⁶

From now on, he was on the path to achieve his personal goals of world conquest and not strategic political gains. The episode involving the Gordian Knot even back in 333 BCE clearly showed that he knew how to use legends for his own ends and the episode had added much to his personal mystique since the gods, it seemed, were ordaining him as the conqueror of Asia (Gilley & Worthington, 2010: 194). The incident in Egypt is a good example where we clearly see a precedent for the germination of Alexander’s ambitions for divinity. While at Siwah in Egypt, Alexander visited the oracular site of Zeus Ammon. There, he was met by the priest, “but he misinterpreted (perhaps intentionally) the priest’s greeting  paidion (‘o boy’) for  pai dios (‘o son of Zeus’). Although much of the visit is a mystery, since Alexander met the priest and heard the god’s responses to his questions in private, the sources reveal a change in Alexander for he now openly called himself the son of Zeus… Once again, the king manipulated a situation for his own ends.”⁸⁷ This visit to Siwah itself has to be seen in the light of the possibility that it was an attempt to emulate Perseus and Heracles. (Gilley & Worthington, 2010: 195).

Later, an incident with the philosopher Anaxarchus might have even given him the idea that Alexander himself should be a god like Herakles. In 328 BCE, Arrian narrates that the philosopher made a speech proposing that ‘it would be far more just to reckon Alexander a god than Dionysus and Heracles, not so much because of the magnitude of Alexander’s achievements, but also because Dionysus was a Theban, and had no connection with Macedon, and Heracles an Argive, also unconnected with Macedon, except for Alexander’s family, for he was descended from Heracles’.

Callisthenes responded to it by his own argument that  ‘even Heracles did not receive divine honours from the Greeks in his own lifetime, nor even after his death till the god of Delphi gave his sanction to honouring him as a god’. In short, Alexander should wait until he was dead if he wanted to be a god (Stoneman, 2019: 84). As Heracles had an intimate connection to the Macedonian royal house, his legends had deep imprint on Alexander. The exceptional achievements of the hero who had become god provided him with a model. Already Philip had claimed land conquered by Heracles.⁸⁸

But, Alexander was now attempting to surpass his divine ancestor. The motive of stating these incidents is that Alexander had now started to seriously consider and believe in his own divinity.

His first attempt to actually put his belief in practice came with an incident in Bactria in 327 BCE, before his march on India. Here, he attempted to introduce the Asian practice of proskynesis at his court in which an individual either prostrated himself before the king or bowed and blew the king a kiss but the move backfired. For the Greeks however, the gesture was blasphemous since it appeared to be an act of prostration to the gods, and even the posture was not acceptable as noted by some scholars. We wouldn’t be wrong to assume that Alexander definitely would have known the risk he was taking by such decision. He must have known how his men would critically react to such a religiously charged custom. Yet, he took the risk. The result was on the expected lines. The attempt was a failure in the end, because his court historian, Callisthenes, “refused to participate, and the other men followed suit” (Gilley & Worthington, 2010: 195).

We can see how deeds of Herakles and surpassing them would have then become important for Alexander. Even though, Alexander himself might have believed in his divinity but the fellow Greeks and Macedonians were not going to so easily. We have to understand that Alexander’s campaigns of  327 BCE at Bactra, and then in India (327-325 BCE) were not a military necessity: no Indian ruler at that time threatened his conquests of either Iran or Central Asia (Olbrycht, 2010: 360).

Keeping these events in mind, again we can see ambitions of something grander. Alexander, a king was in the need of something more persuasive for him to become a god. Could India provide him with an opportunity to surpass Heracles and Dionysus? It could and it did. That’s why for Alexander, campaign in India has to be seen in the context of not just a campaign of a world conqueror but a campaign in which if he, a king emerged victorious, a god would be born. Not only the legends of Dionysus, which have been the main concern of the post but legends of Heracles and Alexander’s attempt in going ahead than the god himself by conquering India came into play when as per Curtius, claims of being descendants of the Hercules’(Heracles’) army were made by the tribe of Sibi of India. Diodorus also mentions on the same lines when he relates this story vis-à-vis India –

“It is said that Heracles of old thought to lay siege to this ‘rock’ (Rock Aornos) but refrained because of the occurrence of certain sharp earthquake shocks and other divine signs, and this made Alexander even more eager to capture the stronghold when he heard it, and so to rival the god’s reputation” (Diod. 17.85.2).”⁸⁹

This Aornos was convincingly identified by Aurel Stein with Pir-Sar (Stoneman, 2019: 86). In this story, we again notice the consistent theme of Alexander and his ambition to ‘rival’ the gods. However, it is fascinating to note that unlike Dionysus no previous classical writer mentions exploits of Heracles east of the Caucasus before Alexander’s campaign in India. To provide a solution for this problem, there was a deliberate attempt on part of Alexander to identify the Hindu Kush as the Caucasus (the Indian Caucasus) and thus this assisted the extension of his adventures to this region.⁹⁰

Arrian also mentions how Macedonians transferred the name of Mount Kaukasos from Pontos to the eastern parts of the world and the land of the Paropamisadai adjacent to India (for they called Mount Paropamisos, Kaukasos), to enhance the glory of Alexander as if he had passed over Kaukasos. And again, he says that when the Macedonians saw in India itself oxen marked with a brand in the form of a club, they took this as a proof that Herakles had gone as far as the Indians.⁹¹

Stoneman is of the opinion that the conquest of Aornos seemed to be the point at which the myth of Heracles began to infiltrate the myth of Alexander in a significant way (Stoneman, 2019: 86).  But, many ancient writers like Eratosthenes, Strabo, Arrian doubted the authenticity of these claims and noted that these legends were mere fabrications by Alexander’s flatterers and were boasted only on magnify Alexander’s achievements (Stoneman, 2019: 86).

Strabo says, “That these are fabrications of the flatterers of Alexander is clear, especially because the historians do not agree with one another, with some speaking about but others simply not recording them” (Strabo 15.1.9).”⁹²

As the lineage of the Macedonian Royal House was connected to Heracles, it is easier for us to understand why Alexander would have wanted to surpass him and why was he eager to see any signs of Heracles in India. But why was he hoping to see signs of Dionysus as well? Even though Dionysus was not considered an ancestor of the Macedonian royal house in earlier times, he had been worshipped there by the fourth century BCE (Stoneman, 2019: 91) and Nysa was the place where Dionysus was considered to have been born or reared. According to Greek traditions, Nysa was traditionally localized in Arabia, however, this Nysa had already been traditionally  situated in multiple places like in Euboea, Thrace, Lydia and Ethiopia as well.⁹³ But after Darius’ victory over India, the knowledge and tales regarding the mysterious land had already started to take shape in the classical Greek world.

It was at this time in a play by Euripides, a fifth century BCE author and a tragedian of classical Athens, that Dionysus was made a conqueror of all of Asia including Bactria and India. It wouldn’t be wrong to assume that this play must have been known to Alexander. (Stoneman, 2019: 93). Euripides’ plays “The Bacchae and The Cyclops could have influenced Alexander by allowing for Dionysus to have potentially traveled to India and for Alexander being able to claim descent from Dionysus respectively.”⁹⁴

The Macedonian king was therefore predisposed to find signs of Dionysus’ presence in India along with Heracles. However, there is another intriguing reason as to why Alexander might have wanted to identify with Dionysus. Stoneman tries to reason an interesting possibility – Dionysus was a god who had a mortal mother, though his father was Zeus. Like Heracles, Stoneman continues, he was a latecomer to Olympus, but unlike Heracles he was a ‘true god’, because his mother Semele was also translated to Olympus (Stoneman, 2019: 91). So, Alexander probably wanted to surpass the deeds of a ‘true god’ in his campaign in India. And that’s why Dionysus and his legends related to Nysa in India became much more valuable for Alexander. It is clearly not that the case that Alexander was creating every legend from the scratch. After all, there were stark similarities between the gods of the local inhabitants and their religious practices with what Alexander and his army encountered in India.

But, as we analyzed in previous sections, these were possibly related to even more ancient/archaic Neolithic connections. Another point to remember is that this identification with the Greek gods was neither limited to India. In fact, as we read before, this was the same in the case of Ammon of Egypt, Melkart of Tyre and also interestingly, in another example of the ‘Gallic Heracles’ Ogmius, who was represented as a very old man who, besides his club, bow and lion-skin, has a chain bored through his tongue by which he leads his followers.⁹⁵ Clearly, the similarities of a Greek and a foreign god need not be that close for Greeks to identify them (Stoneman, 2019: 87) as the extensions of their divinities. The Greeks’, Bevan says,’ ‘always experienced a keen joy of recognition, when they could connect foreign things with the figures of their own legends..” ⁹⁶

Though, it can also very well be argued that this was not peculiar to the Greeks but was part of the general traits of ancient polytheistic religions and cultures across the world. Therefore, Alexander’s predisposition to find imprints of Dionysus and to some extent Heracles in India led him and his army to ascribe whatever similarities they could find in the local religious practices and identify them as extensions of the Greek gods. This is the reason that when they found mountains where vines and ivy grew, they connected it to a sign of Greek divinity. The Macedonians and Greeks do not seem to have understood that it was simply a question of altitude whether such plants grew in ‘India’, but still took it as a sign of the god’s presence.⁹⁷

Arrian noted that the Indians wore dappled clothing like Bacchants and banged drums and cymbals a lot (Stoneman, 2019: 94). The wine-cult also seemed to have been prevalent. These ‘Dionysiac’/‘Bacchalic’ style of the festivities of the inhabitants of the ancient Kamboja and Gandh āra must have solidified this belief of the Greeks and the Macedonians. We have to understand that Alexander and his companions were not seeking to explain phenomena of Indian religion, but to find evidence for Dionysus in this unfamiliar land (Stoneman, 2019: 97). Hence, it’s not that unique that Greeks saw their divinities in the foreign ones but what is rather unique is the precision with which this was put to use by Alexander for his ‘public relations’.

Arrian says about Alexander with regard to the legend of Dionysus and Nysa in India – “since he had himself reached the place to which that deity had come, and meant to penetrate farther than he; for the Macedonians, he thought, would not refuse to share his toils if he advanced with an ambition to rival the exploits of Dionysos.” (M’Crindle, 1896: 81). Alexander perceived that by sparing the citizens he had not so much served their interests as those of his own army.⁹⁸

Readers should also notice how Alexander was being presented in these stories. It was clearly not anymore about god Dionysus but equally or rather more importantly about Alexander himself. Arrian relates in what posture and condition the deputies from Nysa in India found Alexander: “the deputies, it is said, on entering the Alexander’s tent found him sitting in his armour, covered with dust from his journey, wearing his helmet, grasping his spear. They fell to the ground in amazement at the sight and remained for a long time silent” (M’Crindle, 1896: 80).

Justin also states: “…When he had reached the city of Nysa, and found that the inhabitants offered no resistance, he ordered their lives to be spared, from a sentiment of reverence towards Father Bacchus, by whom the city had been founded ; at the same time congratulating himself that he had not only undertaken a military expedition like that god, but had even followed his very footsteps. He then led his army to view the sacred mountain, which the genial climate had mantled over with vine and ivy..”(M’Crindle, 1896: 321).

There are also other instances in India other than Nysa, which according to the classical writers, Alexander was told to have appeared a divine to the inhabitants. As soon as Alexander entered the ‘boundaries of India’, he was met by the petty kings of the area, who ‘welcomed him as the third son of Zeus to come that way’, according to Curtius. When the army reached the Oxydracae (Kṣūdrakas), near the junction of the Hydaspes ( Jhelum) and Acesines (Chenab), the people announced that ‘they wished to retain the freedom which they had preserved for all time from Dionysus’ arrival in India to that of Alexander. Strabo even said that they claimed descent from Dionysus, which he must have got from one or other of the Alexander historians. Further south, the people they called the Sabarcae (in the region of Multan) were so terrified by the sight of the Macedonian army that ‘they believed an army of gods was approaching with a second Father Liber (a name famous among those peoples).⁹⁹

How much importance was being given to this narrative of Alexander and his divinity can be seen in the statements of both Arrian and Plutarch. Both state that Alexander trained the Indians to respect the gods, among whom he included himself.¹⁰⁰ This was again not only in case of  India but there were other examples as well in which as per Strabo Alexander added himself to the gods already worshipped by the Arabs, namely Zeus and Dionysus (Stoneman, 2019: 81). But despite such publicized signs of the divine in India, Alexander’s men were losing their morale; they had been pushed to their limits. Neither the conquest of Bactria-Sogdiana, nor of India was ever a part of the plan.

The army of Alexander was exhausted and the apprehension of facing an even bigger force, if they moved ahead, made the soldiers worried. When they refused to march beyond Hyphasis, Alexander gave this speech to the soldiers, where we again see the importance of the legends of Dionysus and Heracles related to India –

“…Know ye not that it was not by staying at home in Tiryns or Argos, or even in Peloponnesos or Thebes, that our ancestor was exalted to such glory, that from being a man he became, or was thought to be, a god. Nor were the labours few even of Dionysos, who ranks as a god far above Herakles. But we have advanced beyond Nysa, and the rock Aornos, which proved impregnable to Herakles, is in our possession…”¹⁰¹

But Alexander could not persuade his men and the soldiers remained steadfast in wanting to retreat. Alexander’s campaign in India and his discovery of a city of Nysa gave fire to the legend of Dionysus and him being intimately connected to Alexander. Though, Dionysus was not an ancestor of the Macedonian house, Stoneman says that by the end of Alexander’s reign somebody had managed to insert him there: ‘the stemma was fully fledged in the Ptolemaic period, and there was every reason for its evolution at Alexander’s court’. This is more obvious when we see that Dionysus appeared as a symbol of Alexander in the Grand Procession of Ptolemy Philadelphus.¹⁰²

Even though, as mentioned before, Dionysus was already an important god in Macedonia but now Alexander adopted Dionysus as a presiding deity of his reign (Stoneman, 2019: 91). For the same reason, Megasthenes had hoped to identify Heracles and Dionysus in India because Alexander had insisted they were there (Stoneman, 2019: 88). The legend of Dionysus’ expedition to India clearly accelerated after Alexander’s death, turning up in several lost Hellenistic epics, and ultimately culminating in the epic by ancient author Nonnus (Stoneman, 2019: 98) in which he wrote –

From a wind-tossed branch a Hamadryad Nymph bent low, emerging womanly from her leafy flanks. Thyrsus in hand, she looked just like a Bacchant . . . and whispered in the ear of grape-draped Dionysus: ‘God of Wine, lord gardener of the fruits . . . I am a Hamadryad of the beautiful leaves; and here, where fierce warriors lie in wait for you, I will reject my fatherland and save your army from death. I offer loyalty to your satyrs, although I am Indian, and I take the part of Dionysus.’

— Nonnus, Dionysiaca 22. 84–100¹⁰³

Conclusion

As perfectly put by Stoneman, “Alexander came to India not just with a research project (if he did) but with a determination to stamp on the alien land a character that he and his fellow Macedonians could recognize.”¹⁰⁴ And this amplified the legends related to Dionysus and his city of Nysa in India. Does that mean that there is no evidence of any settlement of pre-Alexandrian Greeks in India? As discussed in the previous sections, on basis of numismatics and even ancient Indian sources, there is such a possibility of Greeks being present in India in the north-west of the sub-continent or there is even a possibility of their settlements in some outlying provinces of the country. But, the evidence is not conclusive enough in this regard and that’s why the question of any proper pre-Alexandrian Greek settlements in India should be considered in negative until any more conclusive evidence emerges.

What is conclusive is that the ‘Nysa in India’ was a legend that had not much to do with facts and got early mention due to the plays by written by Euripides and got more popular due to the campaign of Alexander. The native tribes of ancient Kamboja of the sub-continent were the actual inhabitants of ‘Nysa’. There is a stronger possibility of Greek presence in Bactria-Sogdiana as suggested by the story regarding the exile of Branchidae. What is conclusive on the basis of the same evidence is that directly or indirectly, the civilizations of India and Greece were for sure in contact by fifth century BCE and the Persian Empire was the catalyst of these contacts. And, these contacts only accelerated after Alexander even though his conquests in India were soon undone by Chandragupta Maurya.

What is conclusive is that narratives regarding the erstwhile Kafirs, the remaining Kalash or any tribe of the sub-continent for that matter and them being the ‘Greek descendants’- Alexander’s or otherwise – should really be put to rest. The genetic studies mentioned in the post have found those claims baseless. And there are enough plausible reasons, alluded to in the post that explains any similarities between these far away civilizations.

There is no doubt that an imprint of Greek civilization and ideas were felt strongly in ancient India – even more so in various aspects of the culture of the ancient Indian north-west, particularly after the establishment of the Graeco-Bactrian Kingdom and more when Indo-Greeks found their foothold in the country in later centuries. As mentioned earlier, the art of the region was most strongly influenced by these contacts but the ideas and the emotions portrayed in that art remained rooted in the indigenous religion and culture. What should certainly be understood is that the idea of a city of ‘Nysa in India’ founded by Dionysus and the subsequent popularity of these legends in the western classical world had a lot to do with Alexander’s campaign, in mythologisation of his expedition in heroic terms, his attempts to surpass his divine ancestors and interestingly, his belief in his own divinity.

References

• ¹ M’Crindle, 1896. The Invasion of India by Alexander the Great. p. 79
• ² Lal, 2004. Yavanas in the Ancient Indian Inscriptions. p. 1115
• ³ Unvala, 1947. Political and Cultural Relations.. p. 174
• ⁴ Lal, 2004. p. 1115
• ⁵ Vasant, 1988. Yavanas in Western India. p. 331
• ⁶ Tola & Dragonetti, 1986. India and Greece Before Alexander. p. 159
• ⁷ ibid. p. 164
• ⁸ Narain, 1957. The Indo-Greeks. p. 1
• ⁹ Lal, 2004. p. 1115
• ¹⁰ ibid.
• ¹¹ Jayaswal, 1934. An Imperial History of India. p. 16
• ¹² Vassiliades, 2004. Greeks and Buddhism… pp. 134-135
• ¹³ ibid. p. 135
• ¹⁴ Lal, 2004. p. 1116
• ¹⁵ Vassiliades, 2004. p . 144
• ¹⁶ Bhandarkar, 1921. Lectures on Ancient Indian Numismatics.. p. 26
• ¹⁷ ibid. p. 27
• ¹⁸ Stoneman, 2019. The Greek Experience of India: From Alexander to the Indo-Greeks. p. 28
• ¹⁹ Vassiliades, 2004. p . 136
• ²⁰ Tola & Dragonetti, 1986. p. 167
• ²¹ ibid.
• ²² M’Crindle, 1896. p. 79
• ²³ ibid.
• ²⁴ ibid.
• ²⁵ ibid. p. 80
• ²⁶ ibid. p. 82
• ²⁷ ibid. p. 192
• ²⁸ ibid.
• ²⁹ ibid. p. 338
• ³⁰ Tarn, 1922. The Greeks in Bactria & India. p. 168,244
• ³¹ Narain, 1957. p. 3
• ³² ibid.
• ³³ Panchenko, 2002. The City of the Branchidae and the Question of Greek Contribution to the Intellectual History of India and China. p. 244
• ³⁴ Hammond, 1998. The Branchidae at Didyma and in Sogdiana. p .341
• ³⁵ Narain, 1957. p. 3
• ³⁶ Linonel, 2005. Historical Commentary on Herodotus Book 6. p. 121
• ³⁷ Panchenko, 2002. p. 246-247
• ³⁸ ibid. p. 248
• ³⁹ ibid. p. 249
• ⁴⁰ Davis, 1960. Greek and Roman Coins and their Historical Interest. p. 71
• ⁴¹ Jansari, 2018. The Spophytes Coins: from Punjab to Bactria and back again. p. 76
• ⁴² Gardner, 1880. On Some Coins of Syria and Bactria. p. 191
• ⁴³ Rapson, 1898. Indian Coins. p. 3
• ⁴⁴ Head, 1906. The Earliest Graeco-Bactrian and Graeco-Indian Coins. p. 8
• ⁴⁵ Narain, 1957. p. 4
• ⁴⁶ Goyal, 1999. The Origin and Antiquity of Coinage in India. p. 145
• ⁴⁷ Bopearachchi, 2000. Coin Production and Circulation in Central Asia and North-West India (Before and After Alexander’s Conquest. p. 314
• ⁴⁸ ibid. p. 309
• ⁴⁹ Mansoor, A., et al. 2004. Investigation of the Greek ancestry of populations from northern Pakistan.
• ⁵⁰ Firasat, S., et al. 2007. Y-chromosomal evidence for a limited Greek contribution to the Pathan population of Pakistan.
• ⁵¹ Ayub, Q., et al. 2015. The Kalash genetic isolate: ancient divergence, drift, and selection.
• ⁵² Narasimhan, et al. 2019. The formation of human populations in South and Central Asia.
• ⁵³ Cacopardo, 2011. Are the Kalasha Really of Greek Origin? p. 57
• ⁵⁴ Abdullaev, 2017. Funeary Tradition of the Ancient East in Examples from Anatolia and Bactria-Margian. Origins or Parallels? pp. 44-45
• ⁵⁵ Wilber, 1962. Afghanistan: its people, its society, its culture. p. 51
• ⁵⁶ ibid.
• ⁵⁷ Parkes, 1987. Livestock Symbolism and Pastoral Ideology Among the Kafirs of the Hindu Kush. p. 647
• ⁵⁸ Jettmar, 2002. Beyond the Gorges of the Indus: Archaeology before Excavation. p. 19
• ⁵⁹ Wilson, 1866. The Vishnu Purana: A System of Hindu Mythology and Tradition. Vol III. p. 292
• ⁶⁰ Wilber, 1962. p. 50
• ⁶¹ Filigenzi, 2019. Non-Buddhist Customs of Buddhist People: Visual and Archaeological Evidence from North-West Pakistan. p. 60
• ⁶² ibid. p. 61
• ⁶³ ibid. p. 63
• ⁶⁴ ibid. p. 78
• ⁶⁵ Cacopardo, 2011. p. 74
• ⁶⁶ ibid. pp. 74-75
• ⁶⁷ ibid. pp. 72-74
• ⁶⁸ ibid. p. 76
• ⁶⁹ Filigenzi, 2019. p. 74
• ⁷⁰ Witzel, 2004. Kalash Religion. The Ṛgvedic Religious System and its Central Asian and Hindukush Antecedents.
• ⁷¹ Cacopardo, 2011. pp. 48-49
• ⁷² ibid. p. 49
• ⁷³ ibid. pp. 50-51
• ⁷⁴ ibid. p. 51
• ⁷⁵ ibid. p. 54
• ⁷⁶ ibid. p. 54
• ⁷⁷ ibid. p. 56
• ⁷⁸ ibid. p. 55
• ⁷⁹ ibid. p. 61
• ⁸⁰ ibid. p. 62
• ⁸¹ ibid. p. 70
• ⁸² Leitch, 2018. Alexander The Great’s Use of Myth on Campaign. p. 110
• ⁸³ ibid.
• ⁸⁴ ibid. p. 111
• ⁸⁵ ibid.
• ⁸⁶ ibid. p. 112
• ⁸⁷ Gilley & Worthington, 2010. Alexander The Great, Macedonia & Asia. A Companion to Ancient Macedonia. p.195
• ⁸⁸ Stoneman, 2019. p. 83
• ⁸⁹ Leitch, 2018. p. 112
• ⁹⁰ Stoneman, 2019. p. 84
• ⁹¹ M’Crindle, 1896. p. 83
• ⁹² Leitch, 2018. p. 112
• ⁹³ Stoneman, 2019. p. 93
• ⁹⁴ Leitch, 2018. p. 113
• ⁹⁵ Stoneman, 2019. p. 87
• ⁹⁶ Law, 1943. Tribes in Ancient India. p. 154
• ⁹⁷ Stoneman, 2019. p. 93
• ⁹⁸ M’Crindle, 1896. pp. 321-322
• ⁹⁹ Stoneman, 2019. p. 94
• ¹⁰⁰ ibid. p. 81
• ¹⁰¹ M’Crindle, 1896. p. 124
• ¹⁰² Stoneman, 2019. p. 98
• ¹⁰³ ibid. p. 91
• ¹⁰⁴ ibid. p. 81

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