252 Lassen on the History traced [No. 99, 



INTRODUCTION. 



Among the different empires which were formed on the 

 dismemberment of the conquests of Alexander the Great, none 

 were placed in a position more remarkable and peculiar, in a 

 geographical and historical point of view, than the Greco- 

 Bactrian kingdom, and the Indo-Grecian kingdoms, which found 

 their origin in it. These were called into existence, when the 

 course of those great historical events was already complete, 

 by which the plastic, and intelligent genius of the Greeks 

 had been united to that of the imaginative and pious, or ac- 

 cording to the view of others, superstitious Orientals, and by 

 amalgamation of the west with the east, produced a new forma- 

 tion of historical relations, viz., Hellenism. Though the Greek 

 in Bactria proved still the strenuous soldier, inspired with the 

 remembrances of the exploits of Alexander the Great, and his 

 companions, yet he was no longer the rugged Macedonian of the 

 old campaigns, full of local nationalism : for he had become, 

 in the luxurious capitals of the Seleucidan kingdom, already too 

 well accustomed to Oriental manners and modes of worship, 

 and when proceeding from the banks of the Tigris and Orontes 

 he reached the eastern parts of the Greco- Asiatic empire^ he 

 met there with natives already in a great degree acquainted 

 with his peculiar customs and institutions. Thus the wounds re- 

 ceived in the first fierce shock of jarring contrasts were already 

 beginning to close. 



Now as by the establishment of the Bactrian empire, the 

 mighty process involving the formation of a new era was 

 roughly completed, elements must have been admitted as agents 

 in that process from the remotest east of Bactria and Sogdiana, 

 congenial to those countries. The Bactrian was, as an inha- 

 bitant of the highland of Iran, far other than the Oriental of 

 Syria, Egypt, or Asia Minor, and he was, even among the tribes 

 of Iran, of a peculiar stamp. If any where, Zoroaster's doctrine 

 of light must here have been preserved most purely, and thus 

 in the amalgamation of Oriental and Hellenic character, Bac- 

 trian Hellenism must have been formed from the beginning in 

 its own way, a smaller circle in the great revolution of the east. 



