Bactria

Approximate location of Bactria

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Map of the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom at its maximum extent, circa 180 BC.

Bactria was the name of a region in Central Asia based in the area south of the Oxus River (modern Amu Darya) and north of the mountains of the Hindu Kush, an area within the north of modern Afghanistan.

[Bactria] was an active center of Buddhism in the centuries immediately preceding and following the onset of the Common Era. A Greco-Bactrian kingdom was established by Diodotus I around 250 BCE. The Greek rulers received Buddhist emissaries from Asoka and the Mahavamsa describes the monk Mahādharmarakṣita as ordaining Greeks as monks. Buddhism would flourish under later Greek kings, most notably Menander, the putative interlocutor of the Milindapañha. Buddhist texts written in cursive Greek have been discovered in Afghanistan. Clement of Alexandria seems to mention Buddhists among the Bactrians during the second century CE, when, in describing the gymnosophists, he writes, “Some of the Indians obey the precepts of Boutta; whom, on account of his extraordinary sanctity, they have raised to divine honors.”

Further reading

• Bactria, Wikipedia