Abstract

This talk presents evidence that re-examines the legacy of Hellenism in India by reassessing the identity of the “Yavana” ethnonym often applied to Greeks living in Northwestern ancient India, generally named Bactria. The term is a Sanskrit transliteration of “Ionia” by way of the Achaemenid Yona. But this traditional narrative omits their interaction with the Yuezhi, the Central Asian warrior tribes who migrated south and established the Kuṣāṇa (Kushan) Empire (1st cent. BCE–4th cent. CE). This talk challenges the prevailing view of the Yavanas as “Indo-Greeks” by situating them as an innovative culture within the broader geopolitical context of Eurasian and Sino-Indian framework of exchange. Building on my first monograph-in-progress, Cosmic Embodiment: Astrological Melothesia in the Ancient Mediterranean and South Asia, I argue that the fusion of Greco-Babylonian zodiacal theory with Indian jyotiṣa in the Yavana Jātaka, a 2nd-3rd century CE Sanskrit astral science treatise, arose from intellectual contact zones such as the ancient university town Takṣaśilā (Taxila), where Hellenistic, Indian, and Kushan populations converged and became vital trading partners with the Roman Empire and governed the Tarim Basin routes going to China. By integrating textual, numismatic, and epigraphic evidence, my talk emphasizes how the Kushan empire forces us to rethink Hellenistic identity and how it facilitated transregional development of astral science through regal adoption of astral imagery. This talk relocates the development of scientific knowledge from Alexandrian and Mediterranean centers to Eastern loci, reframing Hellenistic-era knowledge production, preservation, and propagation as occurring within a rich network of ancient academic centers.

Biography

Tejas Aralere is an assistant professor of Classics and Humanities at the University of New Hampshire. He is currently a Center for Hellenic Studies and Loeb Classical Library Foundation Fellow which have funded his visit to the MPIWG. His research broadly explores the history of scientific exchange in the ancient Mediterranean and South Asia, but he loves writing on Augustan elegy, philosophy of science, and exploring the intertwined histories of politics and science. 

Photography

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