Menander I and Nagasena

MENANDER I SOTER (called Milinda in Indian sources) and his Buddhist teacher Nagasena. Menander I was an Indo-Greek king who lived in the 2nd century BC. Under his reign, the Indo-Greek kingdom reached its height. Menander became a patron of Buddhism and is said to have reached Nirvana. While Alexander never made it past the Indus Valley, Menander launched a military campaign to northeast India, reaching Pataliputra, the former Mauryan capital, and the Ganges. At his death, his remains were placed inside stupas distributed across his kingdom. Menander’s discussions with Nagasena are recorded in the text called Milinda Panha.

THE INDO-GREEK KINGDOM: In the late 4th century BC, Alexander the Great conquered the Indus Valley, a part of which was already under Persian rule before him. He planned to keep pushing into India attacking the Nanda Empire, but his army mutinied after a costly battle at the Hydaspes and he was forced to leave India. After Alexander’s death, the Indian satrapies were part of the Seleucid Empire, but Seleucus’ rule in India didn’t last long. Chandragupta Maurya fought a war with Seleucus and won, forcing him to surrender the Indian territories conquered by Alexander a few years earlier. The Indus Valley was now part of the Mauryan Empire. Chandragupta’s grandson, Ashoka the Great, adopted Buddhism, becoming the first Buddhist ruler in history. Ashoka introduced Buddhism among the Greek colonists that Alexander had settled in north-western India, now under Mauryan rule. Greek Buddhist missionaries participated in the delegations that Ashoka sent to Sri Lanka. Meanwhile, the Seleucid Empire was having trouble. The Parthians were getting stronger, and the Greco-Bactrian kingdom became independent from the Seleucids. The Mauryan Empire was eventually overthrown by the Shunga dynasty, and shortly after, Demetrius I of Bactria invaded the Indus Valley, restoring Greek rule in north-western India. At first, these Indian territories were ruled from Bactria, until the reign of Apollodotus I, who finally stablished an independent Indo-Greek kingdom. This kingdom was already religiously syncretic, with the gods of the Olympus coexisting with Buddhism and Hinduism, but it was under Menander I that Buddhism became the main religion. The Indo-Greek kingdom ended up being overrun by nomadic tribes. The Yuezhi, future founders of the Kushan Empire, and the Indo-Scythians, put an end to the Indo-Greek kingdom and stablished their own kingdoms. The Hellenistic art school of Gandhara, however, continued under the Indo-Scythians and the Kushans for centuries. At some point between the Indo-Greeks and their successors from the steppe, the first anthropomorphic representation of the Buddha was made in a Hellenistic style, sometimes accompanied by the Greek demigod Herakles as his bodyguard.