The North West India of Second Century BC. In the second century B.C. when the great Mauryan Empire crumbled and fell, north-western India suffered from the first of the series of invasions, which were to have such a far-reaching effect not only on this region of the subcontinent, but on India as a whole. The Bactrian Greeks who occupied first the Kabul valley and then the Panjab were undoubtedly a thorn in the side of India. Probably their military methods were fiercer and more ruthless than those to which India had been used, if the fleeting references to them in Sanskrit literary sources may be believed. They made more than one great raid into the Indian heartland and, on one occasion at least, reached the great city of Pataliputra. But, as was commonly the case in ancient Greek political life, they lacked unity, and, after their first attacks, they withdrew to their first conquests in the northwest where, divided among themselves, their time was taken up with internecine war until at last they were overwhelmed by further waves of invasion. The Greek occupation of India was, in the light of her later history, by no means a disaster. Through it new blood and new ideas were introduced into the culture of the subcontinent.
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