The Graeco-Bactrian king Demetrius I initiated campaigns across/around the Hindu Kush into the Indus–Gandhara region, a process commonly treated as the start of Indo-Greek political power in South Asia.
Indo-Greek rulers began issuing bilingual coins (Greek plus Indian scripts), an important administrative and cultural adaptation for governing mixed populations in Gandhara and nearby regions.
The fall of the Maurya dynasty and emergence of the Shunga dynasty (c. 180 BCE) provided a new political landscape in which Greek rulers expanded and held territory in Gandhara and the Punjab.
Agathocles’ bilingual issues included iconography from Indian religious traditions (alongside Greek legends), providing early numismatic evidence for Indo-Greek engagement with local cults and audiences.
Apollodotus I governed major areas centered on Taxila and extending toward Sindh (and possibly Gujarat), and is well known through extensive bilingual coinage aimed at local circulation.
Eucratides I rose to the Greco-Bactrian throne around 170 BCE (dates vary in scholarship), triggering major conflicts with rival Greek dynasts and reshaping the relationship between Bactria and Indo-Greek India.
Menander I (Milinda) expanded and administered one of the largest Indo-Greek realms (Punjab–Gandhara and adjacent regions) and became the best-known Indo-Greek king through both coinage and later literary tradition.
By the later 2nd century BCE, nomadic incursions (notably associated with the Yuezhi) contributed to the loss of Greek rule in Bactria, pushing remaining Greek power south of the Hindu Kush into Indo-Greek polities.
A dedicatory inscription on the Heliodorus pillar (Besnagar/Vidisha) identifies Heliodorus as an envoy of the Indo-Greek king Antialcidas from Taxila to the Indian ruler Bhagabhadra, showing high-level diplomacy and religious patronage beyond the northwest.
Maues (an early Indo-Scythian/Saka ruler) took over significant Indo-Greek areas in the northwest, marking a decisive shift from Indo-Greek dominance toward Saka political control in Gandhara and adjacent regions.
Hermaeus governed a major western Indo-Greek kingdom in the Paropamisadae (around Kabul/“Alexandria of the Caucasus”), representing one of the last substantial Greek regimes west of the main Punjab domains.
Strato II is commonly dated to the late 1st century BCE into the early 1st century CE; his coinage is frequently associated with growing Saka (Indo-Scythian) dominance, and his reign is often treated as among the last phases of Indo-Greek rule in the eastern Punjab/Mathura zone.
Gondophares I founded and ruled a major Indo-Parthian polity that encompassed parts of Drangiana, Arachosia, and Gandhara, reflecting the post-Indo-Greek political reconfiguration of the region.
Indo-Greek Kingdoms in Bactria and Gandhara (c. 180 BCE–10 CE)
