138 Translation of some Greek legends of the [No. 2. 



successors in the lands they ruled over. Professor Wilson in 1841, 

 collected into a single work, his Ariana Antiqua, the results of all that 

 had been done in the investigation of this new page in history, and 

 with the publication of this book, the excitement and the interest of 

 the subject seemed to pass away. Large collections of coins were, it 

 is true, formed by officers and even by English ladies, in Afghanistan, 

 and able numismatists such as Cunningham and Stacy continued their 

 labours as usual ; but the historical result of the new study seemed in 

 the mind of the public to have been attained, and no one cared to 

 exert himself in an exhausted subject. I have in my possession a letter 

 to me from Sir Alexander Burnes, remarking on the singular apathy as 

 to enquiry evinced by even able men during our occupation of Afghan- 

 istan, while, — such was the fatality in the only active correspondents 

 which the Society had beyond the Indus, — Arthur Conolly, Dr. Lord, 

 and Lieut. Pigou of the Engineers, were successively killed in action 

 within no long time one of the other. Events took place shortly after- 

 wards, which diverted attention from the records of the past, in those 

 and the adjacent regions, to the study of an anxious present, and the 

 existence of Ancient Bactria was forgotten. 



The time now appears to me to be propitious for the resumption of 

 the study of her history, not simply as regards herself but in her con- 

 nection with India ; and more particularly as respects later dynasties 

 of Barbaric princes, the Indo-Parthians, the Indo-Scythian, and Sas- 

 sanian monarchs, satraps, or prefects, who held sway, independently, 

 or as tributaries to a greater power, in portions of the dismembered 

 kingdom of the Bactrian Greeks. Provinces, some of which consti- 

 tuted component parts of these principalities, are now the frontier of 

 the British Empire in the east ; tranquillity and good government 

 have succeeded the anarchy which so lately dislocated their whole 

 system ; amid the arts of peace, the local history of those lands through 

 which successive races of mankind have from the remotest ages of the 

 world poured themselves into the Indian Peninsula, should most 

 certainly be diligently investigated. The study should not simply be 

 encouraged ; it should be enjoined, and public measures taken, such 

 as would be adopted by any other European Government placed in 

 India as is that of England, to facilitate and promote enquiry as upon 

 a question of science. It is not enough that from the little we do 

 know something should have been deduced, and systematically put 



