Note 4 — CHAPTER 3

The Yavan, or Greek princes, who apparently continued to rule within the Indus after the Christian era, were either the remains of the Bactrian dynasty or the independent kingdom of Demetrius or Apollodotus, who ruled in the Panjab, having as their capital Sagala, changed by Demetrius to Euthymedia. Bayer says, in his Hist. Reg. Bact., p. 84: “I find from Claudius Ptolemy, that there was a city within the Hydaspes yet nearer the Indus, called Sagala, also Euthymedia; but I scarcely doubt that Demetrius called it Euthydemia, from his father, after his death and that of Menander. Demetrius was deprived of his patrimony A.U.C. 562.” [The site of Sagala is uncertain—Chiniot, Shāhkot, Siālkot (IGI, ii. 80 f.; McCrindle, Ptolemy, 122 ff.).]

On this ancient city, Sagala, I have already said much; conjecturing it to be the Salbhanpura of the Yadus when driven from Zabulistan, and that of the Yuch-chi or Yuti, who were fixed there from Central Asia in the fifth century, and if so early as the second century, when Ptolemy wrote, may have originated the change of Yuti-media, the ‘Central Yuti.’ The numerous medals which I possess, chiefly found within the probable limits of the Greek kingdom of Sagala, either belong to these princes or the Parthian kings of Minnagara on the Indus. The legends are in Greek on one side, and in the Sassanian character on the reverse. Hitherto I have not deciphered the names of any but those of Apollodotus and Menander; but the titles of ‘Great King,’ ‘Saviour,’ and other epithets adopted by the Arsacidae, are perfectly legible. The devices, however, all incline me to pronounce them Parthian. It would be curious to ascertain how these Greeks and Parthians gradually merged into the Hindu population [see IGI, ii. 137].