Bactria Sentence Examples

In Asia Alexander learnt that Bessus had taken the diadem as Darius' successor in Bactria, but so soon as he marched against him Aria rose in his rear, and Alexander had to return in all haste to bring the revolt under.

Nor did he, when this was accomplished, again strike directly at Bactria, but made a wide turning movement through Seistan over Kandahar into the Kabul valley.

In the spring of 328 Alexander crossed the Hindu Kush into Bactria and followed the retreat of Bessus across the Oxus and into Sogdiana (Bokhara).

Till the spring of 327 Alexander was moving to and fro in Bactria and Sogdiana, beating down the recurrent rebellions and planting Greek cities.

In Asia they held Asia Minor and Syria, had sent expeditions into Arabia, and were acquainted with the more distant countries formerly invaded by Alexander, including Persia, Scythia, Bactria and India.

As Zoroaster probably preached his religion in eastern Iran, Vishtaspa must have been a dynast in Bactria or Sogdiana.

Bactria soon became independent under an IndoGreek dynasty, and the blending of Greek, Persian, central Asiatic and Hindu influences had an important effect on the art and religion of India, and through India on all eastern Asia.

When about 255 B.C. Diodotus had made himself king of Bactria and tried to expand his dominions, the chieftain of a tribe of Iranian nomads (Dahan Scyths) east of the Caspian, the Parni or Aparni, who bore the Persian name Arsaces, fled before him into Parthia.

Alexander had at first trusted Persian grandees more freely in this capacity; in Babylonia, Bactria, Carmania, Susiana he had set Persian governors, till the ingrained Oriental tradition of misgovernment so declared itself that to the three latter provinces certainly Macedonians had been appointed before his death.

The eastern provinces of Iran went in 240 or thereabouts, when the Greek Diodotus made himself an independent king in Bactria(q.v.) and Sogdiana, and Tiridates, brother of Arsaces, a " Scythian " chieftain, conquered Parthia (so Arrian, but see Parthia).

The Balkan hill-peoples of Illyrian or Thracian stock, the hill-peoples of Asia Minor and Iran, the chivalry of Media and Bactria, the mounted bowmen of the Caspian steppes, the camel-riders of the Arabian desert, could all be turned to account.

He rebelled against his brother Homizd III., and in 459 defeated and killed him with the help of the Ephthalites, or White Huns, who had invaded Bactria.

Alexander, after building an Alexandria at its foot (probably at Hupian near Charikar), crossed into Bactria, first reaching Drapsaca, or Adrapsa.

Chosroes united with them and conquered Bactria, while he left the country north of the Oxus to the Turks.

The Yue-Chi then occupied Bactria, and little is heard of them for a hundred years.

Here, according to Chinese authorities, their royal family was supplanted by a dynasty called Ki-to-lo (Kidara), who were also of Yue-Chi stock, but belonged to one of the tribes who had remained in Bactria when the Kushans marched to India.

The Yue-Chi were probably the principal means of disseminating it in India, though all movements 'which kept open the communications between Bactria and Persia and India must have contributed, and the first introduction was' due to the short-lived Graeco-Bactrian conquest (180-130 B.C.).

At the very beginning the satrap Artabanus raised a rebellion in Bactria, but was defeated in two battles.

After the conquests of Alexander the Great Sogdiana formed part of the empire of the Seleucidae, and shared the fortunes of the rather better-known Bactria.

Somewhat later the nomad Yue-chi began to move into the valley of the Oxus from the east, and gradually became a settled territorial power in Bactria and Sogdiana, and the dominions of their king, Kadphises I.

It may be remarked that Gregory's own family was a cadet branch of the Arsacid kin which had occupied the thrones of Persia, Bactria, Armenia and Georgia.

The Maurya dynasty broke up about 180 B.C., and at the same time the Greek rulers of Bactria began to lead expeditions across the Hindu-Kush.

Then " Scythian " peoples from central Asia, Sakas and Yue-chi, having conquered Bactria, gradually squeezed within ever-narrowing limits the Greek power in India.

It remains, of course, a question whether the tradition was transmitted by the Greek dynasties from Bactria or by intercourse with the Roman empire; the latter seems now almost certain; but the fact of the influence is equally striking on either theory.

In the middle of the 3rd century B.C. Bactria and Sogdiana broke away from the Seleucid empire; independent Greek kings reigned there till the country was conquered by nomads from Central Asia (Sacae and Yue-chi) a kingdoms. century later.

The history of these Greek dynasties is for us almost a blank, and for estimating the amount and quality of Hellenism in Bactria during the 180 years or so of Macedonian and Greek rule, we are reduced to building hypotheses upon the scantiest data.

See works quoted in articles Greece, History; Rome, History; Ptolemies; Seleucid Dynasty; Bactria, &C.

Still less foundation exists for the belief, once widely spread, that Bactria was the cradle of the Indo-European race; it was based on the supposition that the nations of Europe had immigrated from Asia, and that the Aryan languages (Indian and Iranian) stood nearest to the original language of the Indo-Europeans.

Whether Bactria formed part of the Median empire, we do not know; but it was subjugated by Cyrus and from then formed one of the satrapies of the Persian empire.

When Alexander had defeated Darius III., his murderer Bessus, the satrap of Bactria, tried to organize a national resistance in the east.

But Bactria was conquered by Alexander without much difficulty; it was only farther in the north, beyond the Oxus, in Sogdiana, that he met with strong resistance.

The many difficulties against which the Seleucid kings had to fight and the attacks of Ptolemy II., gave to Diodotus, satrap of Bactria, the opportunity of making himself independent (about 255 B.C.) and of conquering Sogdiana.

When Demetrius advanced far into India one of his generals, Eucratides, made himself king of Bactria, and soon in every province there arose new usurpers, who proclaimed themselves kings and fought one against the other.

In 159 B.C., according to Chinese sources, they entered Sogdiana, in 139 they conquered Bactria, and during the next generation they had made an end to the Greek rule in eastern Iran.

In the 5th century a new people came from the east, the Ephthalites or "white Huns," who subjected Bactria (about 450); and they were followed by the Turks, who first appear in history about A.D.

But when the Sassanian empire was overthrown by the Arabs, the conquerors immediately advanced eastwards, and in a few years Bactria and the whole Iran to the banks of the Jaxartes had submitted to the rule of the caliph and of Islam.

It is mainly religious and philosophical, and purports to give the discussion, extending over several days, in which a Buddhist elder named Nagasena succeeds in converting Milinda, that is Menander, the famous Greek king of Bactria, to Buddhism.

Christianity penetrated to Khorasan and Bactria at an early date; episcopal sees are said to have existed at Mer y and Samarkand in the 4th and 5th centuries, and Cosmas (c. 545) testifies to the spread of Christianity among the Bactrians and Huns.

Bactria was long a province of the empire which Alexander the Great left to his successors, but the Greek historians give very little information of the Oxus basin and its inhabitants.

About 250 B.C. Diodotus, the "governor of the thousand cities of Bactria," declared himself king, simultaneously with the revolt of Arsaces which laid the foundation of the Parthian monarchy.

Some sixty years later occurred the establishment of an independent Greek dynasty in Bactria.

Demetrius (c. 190 B.C.) is supposed to have reigned in Arachosia after being expelled from Bactria, much as, at a later date, Baber reigned in Kabul after his expulsion from Samarkand.

There is a general correspondence between classical and Chinese accounts of the time when Bactria was overrun by Scythian invaders.

In that year Seleucus, 'having recovered Babylon, proceeded to re-establish his authority in Bactria (q.v.) and the Punjab.

Nor yet can we make the favorite assumption 01 a great empire in Bactria.

And here wi may take it as certain that the scene of his activity was laid ir the east of Iran, in Bactria and its neighboring regions.

In order to protect his conquests Alexander had founded several cities in Bactria, Sogdiana and India, in which he settled his veterans.

In Bactria From that time onward the Seleucid Empire was and never at rest.

Philadelphus, and the kings attention was wholly engaged in the defence of the western provinces, the Greeks revolted in Bactria, under their governor Diodotus (qv.).

From Bactria they tried to advance farther into Iran and India.

It succumbed to the Indo-Scythian Empire of the Kushana, who had obtained the sovereignty of Bactria as early as about A.D.

Chosroes concluded an alliance with them against the Ephthalites and so conquered Bactria south of the Oxus, with its capital Balkh.

The name Old Bactrian suggests that the language was limited to the small district of Bactria, or at least that it was spoken therewhich is, at the most, only an Zend.

A Persian force invited by the notorious Pheretima, mother of Arcesilaus III., in revenge for Barcan support of a rival faction, sacked it towards the close of the 6th century and deported a number of its inhabitants to Bactria.

About 250 B.C. Diodotus (Theodotus), governor of Bactria under the Seleucidae, declared his independence, and commenced the history of the Greco-Bactrian dynasties, which succumbed to Parthian and nomadic movements about 126 B.C. After this came a Buddhist era which has left its traces in the gigantic sculptures at Bamian and the rock-cut topes of Haibak.

From the earliest occurrences of the word it is clear that it was used as a national name not only in India but also in Bactria and Persia (in Sanskrit drya- and drya-, in Zend airya-, in Old Persian ariya-).

It is now used uniformly by scholars to indicate the Eastern branch as a whole, a compound, Indo-Aryan, being employed for that part of the Eastern branch which settled in India to distinguish them from the Iranians (Iran is of the same origin), who remained in Bactria and Persia, while Aryo-Indian is sometimes employed to distinguish the Indian people of this stock from the Dravidian and other stocks which also inhabit parts of the Indian peninsula.

Of the highly developed civilizations which grew up and flourished in Bactria, Bokhara and Samarkand the last survivals are now undergoing rapid obliteration with the simultaneous desiccation of the rivers and lakes.

It appears very probable that at the dawn of history East Turkestan was inhabited by an Aryan population, the ancestors of the present Slav and Teutonic races, and that a civilization not inferior to that of Bactria had already developed at that time in the region of the Tarim.'

In 1896 Dr Sven Hedin discovered in the desert not far from the town of Khotan, in a locality known as Borasan, objects in terra-cotta, bronze images of Buddha, engraved gems, coins and MSS.; the objects, which display artistic skill, give indications of having been wrought by craftsmen who laboured to reproduce Graeco-Indian ideals in the service of the cult of Buddha, and consequently date presumably from the 3rd century B.C., when the successors of Alexander the Great were founding their kingdoms in Persia, Khwarezm (Khiva), Merv, Bactria (Afghanistan) and northern India, and from that date to the 4th or 5th century A.D.

And meanwhile the rift between Alexander and his European followers continued to show itself in dark incidents - the murder of Clitus at Maracanda (Samarkand), when Alexander struck down an old friend, both being hot with wine; the claim that Alexander should be approached with prostration (proskynesis), urged in the spring of 327, and opposed boldly by the philosopher Callisthenes, Aristotle's nephew, who had come in the king's train; the conspiracy of the pages at Bactria, which was made an occasion for putting Callisthenes to death.

Not only was Asia Minor detached, but the further eastern provinces had broken away, Bactria under the Greek Diodotus, and Parthia under the nomad chieftain Arsaces.

In 209 Antiochus was in Bactria, where the original rebel had been supplanted by another Greek Euthydemus (see further Bactria and articles on the separate rulers).

Tarn suggests that they may be a " sport," a spasmodic outbreak of genius (see Bactria and works there quoted).

Bactria became a province of the Macedonian empire, and soon came under the rule of Seleucus, king of Asia (see Seleucid Dynasty and Hellenism).

A large body of his troops remained in Bactria; and, in the partition of the empire which followed Alexander's death in 323 B.C., Bactria and India eventually fell to Seleucus Nicator, the founder of the Syrian monarchy (see Seleucid).

In the next century Eucratides, king of Bactria, conquered as far as Alexander's royal city of Patala, and possibly sent expeditions into Cutch and Gujarat, 181-161 B.C. Of the Graeco-Indian monarchs, Menander advanced farthest into north-western India, and his coins are found from Kabul, near which he probably had his capital, as far as 1Vluttra on the Jumna.'

Here the Graeco-Bactrian and Graeco-Indian kingdoms held their own, till, in 139 B.C., they succumbed before the invading Mongolian and Scythian tribes (see BACTRIA and works quoted there).

Badakshan, part of the Greek Bactria, was visited by Hsiian Tsang in 630 and 644.