Rome and the East
the northern part of the Indian sub-continent. It was only in the first cen-
tury..that both this area and Bactria fell under the rule of the Kushans,
who also initially used Greek for their coin legends.^36 John Boardman’s study
of the diffusion of Greek art shows how profound its influence still was, for
instance, on ‘‘Gandharan’’ sculpture and on the earliest sculptural representa-
tions of the Buddha, which date to the first century..^37 Perhaps the most
striking item is the coin of the Kushan king Kanishka, probably dating to
the early second century.., which bears a representation of the Buddha
on the reverse, accompanied by the Greek legendΒΟΔΔΟ.^38
The reign of Kanishka offers some of the most remarkable of all the evi-
dence for the profound and long-lasting influence of Greek in Afghanistan
and northern India. His coins show a transition from the use of royal titles
in Greek to ones in an Iranian language conventionally labelled ‘‘Bactrian.’’
But the script used continues to be Greek, with the addition of one letter,
shaped somewhat like a Greekrho(Ρ), but with the vertical stroke continued
upwards, which was used for the sound ‘‘sh.’’ A truly remarkable find is an
extensive inscription of the first year of Kanishka’s reign, found in at
Rabatak in Afghanistan, and written in Bactrian using this version of the
Greek alphabet. The text, proclaiming the king’s assumption of power, with
divine favour, and recounting the cities in northern India which he ruled,
records explicitly that ‘‘Kanishka the Kushan’’ (Kanēshke koshano) ‘‘issued a
Greek edict and [then] put it into Aryan.’’ A substantial group of Bactrian
documents, one written on copper and the others on perishable materials,
dating to the fourth to eighth century, and still using a cursive variant of the
same (more or less) Greek alphabet, awaits publication.^39 The edict is evi-
dence of the length of both Greek and Iranian influence in the region. Per-
haps only the great inscription of the second Sassanid king, Shapur I (who
. For an illuminating survey, with extensive illustrations, see E. Errington and J. Cribb,
eds.,The Crossroads of Asia: Transformation of Image and Symbol in the Art of Ancient Afghanistan
and Pakistan().
. J. Boardman,The Diffusion of Classical Art in Antiquity(), chap. , ‘‘The East after
Alexander.’’
.Boardman(n. ), (coin reproduced on ); Errington and Cribb (n. ), –
.
. N. Sims-Williams and J. Cribb, ‘‘A New Bactrian Inscription of Kanishka the Great,’’
JournaloftheInstituteofSilkRoadStudies (–): ; N. Sims-Williams, ‘‘Nouveaux docu-
ments sur l’histoire et la langue de la Bactriane,’’CRAI(): (also reporting on the
later documents). For the first group of these documents, see N. Sims-Williams,Bactrian
Documents from Northern Afghanistan, Pt. :Legal and Economic Documents().