Alexandrian Legacy in Asia

Route of Alexander’s Expedition



Alexander the Great and the Hellenistic World


HYBER PASS


Bactrian Coins




Greek Athlete


Heracles and the Buddha


Buddhist Sea Nymphs



Gandara Buddha



Kushan Monk


Kushan Prince

When the young commander of the Greco- Macedonian Army of the Hellenistic Empire, Alexander Megas, 338-323 B.C. conquered the Persian Empire of the Achaemenids in 333 in Syria, his empire momentarily replaced the great Persian empire of Cyrus the Great, Darius, and Xerxes who for generations had been ruling much of the Near East, Central Asia and had extended Persian imperial rule all the way to the West to the Marmara region and Thrace. For 200 years the Persians had represented the dominant imperial power of the known world since 550 B.C. but the extension of their imperial ambitions to conquer Greece after the Ionian revolt of Western Anatolia had been abruptly stopped during the Persian Wars of 500-449 B.C. by the federation of Greek Polis states under the leadership of Athens. Popularly known as the Greek fight for freedom, the Persian Wars has been immortalized in the first book of history written by young Herodotus of Halicarnassus whose father’s generation had been part of the rebellion against Persian rule that had begun in Ionia.

Following the footsteps of the Persian rulers in reverse, Alexander’s conquest of Asia was not merely a military objective for glory but also the realization of his vision for creating a synthesis between Asia, the homeland of ancient civilization, and Europe the land of Greek political ideals and Macedonian military might, in a new civilization that would be Eur-Asian. The synthesis would be firmly sealed through a mixture of the populations as well in order to create a beautiful new Euroasian generation. Alexander ordered his men to marry with local women in Susa and he tried to set an example by his own marriage to Roxanne the young daughter of a local chieftain in Afghanistan. Alexander’s adoption of Persian court rituals and declaring himself to be divine in the tradition of Egyptian practice created great criticism among his Greek followers and generals. But his cosmopolitan vision, though it appeared to stray away for the hardy Macedonian way of life and the pure classicism of Greece, still it gave birth to the so-called Oriental Greek culture of the Mediterranean and traveled all the way to the Himalayas to join with the Buddhist cultural currents.

When Alexander and his army arrived along the banks of the Indus River in West India, today’s Pakistan, he realized that Asia was too big for them to conquer. Thus, he and his mighty Macedonian army crossed into the Himalayan range from the Hindu Kush mountains and entered Afghanistan from the famous Hyber pass, the route of all invaders and conquerors to this day. Alexander conquered most of today’s Central Asia but he also left his cultural legacy by establishing new cities of Alexandria in north Afghanistan and elsewhere just as his conquests led to the construction of new Alexandria cities in Iskenderun and Egypt in the Mediterranean. In North Afghanistan, probably in a site close to where he married Roxanne, Alexander founded an original Alexandria city that was a typical Hellenistic city with a central Agora, Messa road, and an amphitheater. The Afghanistan Alexandria also had a temple for Demeter, the goddess of fertility and the traveler of the evening sky who was represented by the moon. The cultural legacy of the site reflects succinctly the synthesis that took place over millennia since Alexander’s arrival. The village adjacent to the site which has been excavated by Italian archaeologists before the Soviet invasion, today is called Ay Hanim –Moon Lady in the local people of Ozbek Turkish origins. The site has revealed a copper plate with a relief of the goddess traveling through the evening sky in her chariot and represented by the Moon.

The Alexandrian legacy in Asia gave birth to such interesting and innovative combinations of the Mediterranean Greek legacy and the local cultures that merged in the history of Central Asian Buddhism and later perhaps left a legacy of even the later Islamic history of the region. Less well known in European history, the journey of Alexander’s cultural legacy in Asia is a major part of the history of Buddhism that continued after the death of Alexander in 323 B.C. at a young age which closes the door to the European perception of his history. The later empires and kingdoms that were founded on the former territories of the Hellenistic Empire by his loyal Generals continued the synthesis that took place in sites such as Ay Hanim. The Seleucids of South Anatolia and Mesopotamia, the Antigonids in Macedonia and Greece, the Ptolemies in Egypt and finally and most connected to our history of Buddhism in Asia, Bactria of Central Asia are all Greco/Macedonian Kingdoms that inherit Alexander’s Empire. Each in their own eclectic manner mixed local indigenous cultures and peoples with what came from Greece. Most important, Greeks moved into Central Asia and the Middle East, settling in the highlands of India and Afghanistan. While later modernist European opinion has arrogantly looked down upon the so called Oriental Greeks as impure scions of the classical heritage, in fact these Asian Greeks fertilized the birth of Greco-Indian Buddhist civilizations by becoming the pioneer generation of sculptors and artists who created the early images of the Buddha to be worshipped by the devotees of the Monasteries.