Land of the impure
09 February 2014
The decay of the Mauryan Empire gave rise to a new wave of Greek adventurers. In or about the year 184 BCE, Demetrius, the first of the Euthydemid line of kings, left his seat of power at Balkh from where he controlled Afghanistan, and annexed Taxila. Not two decades had passed when another line of Greek adventurers, the descendents of Alexander’s general Seleucus Nikator, displaced the Euthydemids to become masters of first Taxila and Sialkot and eventually most of what is now Pakistan.
Read more »Labels: Alexander, Greeks, History
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
,
Foreign Invaders Through Afghanistan
05 August 2013
Greek historians of the Classical Age wrote a very curious observation about India (Pakistan). They wrote that India was a country that did not attack any other and that no other country attacked India. Indeed, the ruins of Moen jo Daro and Harappa, the two major Indus Valley Civilisation, show citadels and walls that were obviously not made to withstand attacks. They were more to keep a check on the people entering or leaving the city; perhaps with a view to prevent traders from evading payment of customs dues. It was as if our ancient ancestors had no threat of invasion. Though this remote period was separated from Greek writers by two thousand years in which much happened, the collective memory of the people of India held the word to be passed on to the Greeks.
That was our prehistory. But about 1700 BCE, came the great influx of speakers of the Aryan tongues. (Some Indian ‘scholars’ contest this invasion, asserting instead that India was the original home of this white-skinned, fair-haired, blue-eyed race whence they spread across the world. They tread on weak ground). The Aryan invasion changed everything for thereafter India lay open.
Read more »Labels: Greeks, History, India, Pakistan
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
,
