An Account Of The Activities And Adventures Of The Second And Third German Turfan Expeditions
Author: Albert Von Le Coq
Departmental Director and Professor of the National Ethnological Museum Berlin
Translated by ANNA HARWELL
Published by: XJHWIN brothers, LTP., WOKING
First Published in Great Britain 1928
INTRODUCTORY
Historical Survey
Alexander’s conquest doubtless brought in its train the introduction of Greek culture and art into Bactria and North-West India. Many towns were rearranged and peopled by ex-service Greek and Macedonian mercenaries, who married the native women and thus changed the population to one of mixed nationalities but of Greek civilization. In Bactria the Indians were ultimately subdued by the Greeks, after having achieved a short period of successful opposition to the newcomers’ rule, but Grecian supremacy was finally destroyed by the attacks of the Parthians and Sacae about 130 B.C. After the Sacae came the Kushans, who established a great empire embracing the district of the Indus as well as part of Bactria and of East and Western Turkestan.
Even before the invasion of these nomadic tribes Buddhism had made its way from India into the Hindu Kush valleys of the river Kabul. This region in ancient times was called Gandhara, and was inhabited by Indian tribes who appear under the names of Gandarioi and Aparjtai in the enumeration of Xerxes’s troops, given by Herodotus…