Forum Pakistan

A state that sprang up in northwest India after the fall of the *Mauryan empire and as a result of the GraecoBactrians' Indian conquests (see Graeco-Bactrian Kingdom). Menander, the most famous ruler of the Indo-Greek Kingdom (2nd century BC), served as a prototype of king Milinda in the Buddhist epos "Milinda-panha', The capital was the city of Sagala, known today as Sialkot. Coins and literary sources testify to an active interpenetration of Indian and Hellenic cultures in the Indo-Greek Kingdom. In the 1 st century BC, the kingdom was overcome by the Sakas, who founded a number of their own kingdoms.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: A.K. Naraian, 'The Indo-Greeks', Oxford, 1962; W.W. Tarn, 'The Greeks in Baktria and India', Cambridge, 1951.