Greco-Buddhist Relations in the Hellenistic Far East by Olga Kubica;

Author:Olga Kubica;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis (Unlimited)
Published: 2023-02-09T00:00:00+00:00

The inscription of the son of Aristonax30

Then from Ai Khanoum, which is located in the north, we move south towards Kandahar, an area where the Indian influences are pronounced. But we find a purely Greek inscription here, the inscription of the son of Aristonax (Figure 3.3), which antedates the times of the Greco-Bactrian kingdom, but it serves as a context for the remaining two inscriptions discussed, because it may point to a Greek cultural continuity in the areas of Northwest India regardless of the reign and dominant religion. It is a Greek epigram on a statue base, found by the British Institute of Afghan Studies at Shar-ī-Kuna (later Old Kandahar) in 1978, and it is dated to the time between 300 BC and 275/250 BC, most probably around 275 BC. So it is possible that this statue was erected a little earlier than the bilingual edict of Aśoka, which was carved on a rock merely a few hundred metres from where our inscription was found.

FIGURE 3.3 The inscription of the son of Aristonax. The inscription was heavily damaged because the stone was re-used as a threshold of a Hellenistic house. Nevertheless, the text could be identified “as consisting of at least two elegiac couplets, and as forming a metrical dedication of a statue-group of some sort” (Fraser 1979: 9).31

The statue was erected in the sacred precinct (τέμενος). Oikonomides, in his article “The τέμενος of Alexander the Great at Alexandria in Arachosia (Old Kandahar)” (1984), argued that this τέμενος was used for the cult of Alexander the Great, who was the founder of Alexandria in Arachosia. In his theory, Oikonomides supported the identification by Wheeler (1968: 65) of the site in Old Kandahar with Alexandria in Arachosia founded by Alexander. Although the identification of Alexandria in Arachosia is generally acknowledged, there is no clear evidence that this τέμενος was affiliated with the cult of Alexander.

The inscription is a dedication of a statue by the son of Aristonax, whose name is unknown. The word ΘΗΡΟΣ may be a part of this name, but more probably it is a genitive of a noun θήρ, denoting a wild animal. ΘΗΡΟΣΑ can therefore be reconstructed as θηρὸς ἄ[γαλμα], sculpture of a wild animal. So, perhaps the statue commemorated the rescue from a wild beast and represented both, the animal and the saviour of the son of Aristonax (σωτῆρος ἐμοῦ). The name of the son of Aristonax would therefore need to be reconstructed from ΑΛΕΞ, which is not possible due to a large number of Greek names starting with this stem. Oikonomides, on the contrary, reconstructed the name of the dedicator from the third line, which, according to him, should be read: καὶ σωτῆρος ἐμοῦ τ’ [οὔνομα ἔχων…] etc. and thus the son of Aristonax would be a namesake of his rescuer, allegedly Alexander. The end of the second verse (ἀστοῖς, citizens or fellow citizens) is, according to Rougemont (2012b: 166), the proof of the existence on the site of Old Kandahar of an important Greek community, probably a real city with its sanctuaries, that of the high Hellenistic period.

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