The Hellenistic Far East in Historical Fiction. Ancient History, Modern Ideologies
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The Hellenistic Far East in Historical Fiction. Ancient History, Modern Ideologies Rachel Mairs ABSTRACT It has become atruism that it is impossible to reconstruct anarrative history of Central Asia in the period after Alexander. Scant literary or epigraphic sources, and the pitfalls of reconstructing dynastic histories from coins, make scholars wary of writing ‘history’ in the traditional academic sense. It may therefore come as asurprise that Hellenistic-period Central Asia has emerged as the setting for anumber of historical novels. This paper aims to deconstruct the research process that lies behind the crafting of narrative in several such pieces. It will identify the primary sources and works of scholarship used by authors, and explore how these have been used to construct visions of Hellenistic Central Asia which reflect not just on the ancient record, but on the modern authors’ political and social context. The works discussed will include Rudyard Kipling’sThe Man Who Would Be King (on Alexander and his routes in Afghanistan), Teodor Parnicki’s(1955) Koniec Zgody Narodów/The End of the Concord of Nations (which explores the resonances of cultural encounter in Hellenistic Central Asia for the post-War world), and Gillian Bradshaw’s(1990) Horses of Heaven (which uses ahypothetical Graeco-Bactrian alliance with Ferghana as the backdrop for historical romance). KEYWORDS Historiography; historical fiction; numismatics; Graeco-Bactrian; Indo-Greek; Ai Khanoum. INTRODUCTION Scholarly attitudes towards ‘recovering’ the history of Hellenistic Central Asia have changed over time, but for along time there was acommon conviction a) that there was alost narrative history to be recovered; and b) that recovering such ahistory was desirable. Some have taken point (b) further and regarded the recovery of alost narrative as the very raison d’être of the scholar of Central Asia. Tarn, in The Greeks in Bactria and India, dwelt at length on the hypothetical lost ancient Greek narrative which he refers to as ‘Trogus’ source’: There was once aGreek history which covered the Farther East generally, apparently down to 87 BC, and there was another Greek history which also dealt with the Farther East, though seemingly only as an appendage to the history of Parthia; […] the scraps tend to combine, not into other scraps, but into at least the outline of awhole. There will be something to be said about this later, but, as there was once atradition, it is somebody’sbusiness to attempt to recover the outline of it; one is not labouring in avacuum. (Tarn 1951 [1938], xxi) Other historians of the mid-twentieth century speculated on the identity of the author of ‘Trogus’ source’, and the contents of his work (Roy 1939; Bussagli 1956). Narain conceived of his own work, The Indo-Greeks, as one of political history (Narain 1957, Preface). Although wary of the scope afforded by numismatic evidence to the historian to ‘wander off into the land of romance, if he is not disciplined in understanding the limitations of the source he is STUDIA HERCYNIA XXV/1, 119–131
120 STUDIA HERCYNIA XXV/1 using’, Narain also viewed his (primarily numismatic rather than textual) task as one of the ‘reconstruction of the history of the Indo-Greeks’ (Narain 1957, Preface). The archaeological publications on Ai Khanoum by Bernard and other DAFA members make it clear that they are engaged in adifferent enterprise. To this date, the prevailing theme in works on Hellenistic Central Asia, by writers of all nationalities, had been one of recovering alost narrative history. Any such language is entirely absent from the reports on Ai Khanoum published in the Comptes rendus des séances de l’ Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres (1966–1980), whose tone– although at times making the delight of excavators at the spectacular finds very evident– is more rigorously scientific. The word ‘histoire’ is itself avoided in these publications, which refrain from historiographical speculation and reflection. In contrast, more popularising reports on Ai Khanoum, especially those in the English language, maintain the language of historical rediscovery. In apublic lecture at the British Academy in 1966, for example, Bernard takes this as his rhetorical starting point, before shifting his focus to his main subject, the archaeological remains: Until now the knowledge that could be gleaned about this oriental Hellas of the third and second centuries BC was tantalizingly meagre. As far as its history was concerned, our information, deriving from two sources– on the one hand, afew rare texts by Greek, Latin, and Chinese historians, transmitting for the most part scraps of older, lost writings, and, on the other hand, the abundant coinage of the sovereigns of this Greek state– permitted us to trace, with much conjecture, its broadest outlines. […] But what about any evidence of its material and cultural civilization? What about its monuments? (Bernard 1967, 71–72) Bernard appears to be tailoring his approach to his audience in two senses. It is in the English-language scholarship that the ‘lost narrative history’ trope was most common; and his talk was delivered as the British Academy’sannual Albert Reckitt Archaeological Lecture, and was thus open to the public. Part of the reason for areturn to more narrative approaches by Anglophone historians in the 1970s was precisely because of the need to speak to awider audience who favoured such styles. Writing in the journal Past and Present in 1979, for example, ‘narrativist’ historian Lawrence Stone proposed that ‘one further reason why anumber of “new historians” are turning back to narrative seems to be adesire to make their findings accessible once more to an intelligent but not expert reading public, which is eager to learn what these innovative new questions, methods and data have revealed, but cannot stomach indigestible statistical tables, dry analytical argument, and jargon-ridden prose’ (Stone 1979, 15). As well as ahistoriographical approach, the choice to frame investigations into Hellenistic Central Asia as asearch for alost historical narrative therefore represents aparticular mode of public communication. Iimagine that few of the participants at the third meeting of the Hellenistic Central Asia Research Network in Prague in 2018, where the present paper was delivered, would conceive of themselves as engaged in the enterprise of reconstructing the narrative history of Hellenistic Central Asia. Yet there is another group of writers whose goal is precisely that: authors of historical fiction set in the Graeco-Bactrian and Indo-Greek kingdoms. The choice of these kingdoms as the setting for works of fiction offers achallenge– in the lack of the Greek and Roman narrative sources used by authors such as Mary Renault in her works on Alexander– but also freedom to interpret and invent. For those of us who have rejected anarrative framework in our own approach to Hellenistic Central Asia, such works can be similarly both challenging and liberating to read. We may be irked at areconstruction of dynastic relationships which does not match with our own reading of the numismatic evidence, but yet
121RACHEL MAIRS drawn to the imaginings of personalities and quotidian details which we would not be able to include in our own work. The very existence of historical fiction set in Hellenistic Central Asia, or otherwise engaging with its history, may be surprising to some, but in fact there are alarge number of such works, in arange of languages (for some examples, see Coloru 2008). Ido not presume to cover all of them here. They range from the fanciful (aromance about Alexander and Roxana The Maid of Bactria: Kirkman 1913) to the utterly ridiculous (apost-Soviet dictator searches for the lost tomb of Alexander and Hephaistion in the Pamirs: Berry 2007). Authors include academic scholars of the Hellenistic period (Pfrommer 2007; Iam grateful to Gunvor Lindström for this reference) and writers of comic fantasy (Holt 1999). 1 The three works Ishall consider here are Rudyard Kipling’snovella The Man Who Would Be King (1888), Teodor Parnicki’sKoniec ‘Zgody Narodów’ / The End of the ‘Concord of Nations’ (1955), and Gillian Bradshaw’sHorses of Heaven (1990). Ihave selected these particular works principally because their authors are relatively explicit about their sources of historical information, and their desire to craft ahistorical, as well as literary, narrative. These works cover abroad chronological range, from the late nineteenth to late twentieth century, and reflect developments in scholarship on Central Asia at one remove. As well as changing views of ancient Central Asia, they also show what has remained constant– apreoccupation with cultural contact and ethnic intermingling– whether the author is writing atale of adventure, historical science fiction, or romance. Iaim to deconstruct the research process that lies behind the crafting of narrative in these pieces. Iwill identify the primary sources and works of scholarship used by the authors, and explore how these have been used to construct visions of Hellenistic Central Asia which reflect not just on the ancient record, but on the modern authors’ political and social context. THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING The Man Who Would be King is well known to most modern scholars of Central Asia, and has frequently been analysed as aproduct of nineteenth-century British preoccupations with ancient connections between Greeks and Indians (see, for example, Vasunia 2013, 77–89, and Mairs 2018). It was first published in Kipling’scollection of stories The Phantom Rickshaw and Other Eerie Tales in 1888, when he was twenty-three years old and working as Assistant Editor of The Pioneer newspaper in Allahabad. The narrator is anewspaper editor in Lahore, where Kipling himself had worked until the year before the publication of the story. He meets two adventurers, Dravot and Carnehan, who have decided to go to Kafiristan and set themselves up as divine kings, an enterprise which ends in disaster when they are revealed to be mortal. Kipling several times mentions publications which his fictional heroes consult, and which we should suppose that he also had at his disposal. Dravot and Carnehan arrive in the narrator’snewspaper office, and say that they ‘require to see Books and Atlases’ to plan their expedition to Kafiristan. Carnehan says: ‘We have come to you to know about this country, to read abook about it, and to be shown maps. We want you to tell us that we are fools and to show us your books.’ He turned to the bookcases. ‘Are you at all in earnest?’ Isaid. 1 Iam thankful also to the many participants at HCARN III in Prague who shared with me their own favourite Central Asian historical fiction guilty pleasures.
122 STUDIA HERCYNIA XXV/1 ‘Alittle,’ said Dravot, sweetly. ‘As big amap as you have got, even if it’sall blank where Kafiristan is, and any books you’ve got. We can read, though we aren’t very educated.’ Iuncased the big thirty-two-miles-to-the-inch map of India and two smaller Frontier maps, hauled down volume INF-KAN of the ‘Encyclopaedia Britannica’, and the men consulted them. As Dravot recalls his time in Afghanistan during the Second Afghan War: Ihanded him Wood on the ‘Sources of the Oxus.’ Carnehan was deep in the ‘Encyclopaedia.’ ‘They’re amixed lot,’ said Dravot, reflectively; ‘and it won’t help us to know the names of their tribes. The more tribes the more they’ll fight, and the better for us. From Jagdallak to Ashang. H’mm!’ ‘But all the information about the country is as sketchy and inaccurate as can be,’ Iprotested. ‘No one knows anything about it really. Here’sthe file of the “United Services’ Institute.” Read what Bellew says.’ ‘Blow Bellew!’ said Carnehan. ‘Dan, they’re astinkin’ lot of heathens, but this book here says they think they’re related to us English.’ Ismoked while the men poured over Raverty, Wood, the maps, and the ‘Encyclopaedia.’ Kipling’sreference is to the ninth edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica (1882), which contained an article by Henry Yule on ‘Kafiristan’, of which the author as well as his characters clearly made use (on this and Kipling’sother sources see Marx 1999 and Vasunia 2013, 77–89). It is notable that Captain John Wood’s(1841) APersonal Narrative of aJourney to the Source of the River Oxus, the next work to which the narrator refers, was already some decades old, and moved fluidly between description of contemporary Afghanistan, and the region’spast. In such works, as in Kipling’sstory, past and present are conflated, and ancient and modern-day populations identified with one another. This can be seen in the frequent reference by Dravot and Carnehan to both themselves and the Kafiristanis as ‘sons of Alexander’, in contrast to other local populations. Where little information is available, ancient sources are taken as equally valid as modern ethnographical observations (see further Mairs 2018). Wood is probably best known to Central Asianists today for his visit to the site of Ai Khanoum, whose name he recorded as ‘I-khanam’ (Bernard– Francfort 1978, 33–38). He noted the mounds and standing walls of the ancient city, but had no response to his queries about coins and relics (Wood 1841, 394). He is interested in the persistence of traces of Alexander and the Greeks in the present day, but is on the whole more sceptical than Kipling’scharacters– who cannot have read him too closely. He mentions the Alexander historians from time to time, but most often to state with regret things like ‘it is in vain in the delta of such ariver [the Indus near Karachi] to identify existing localities with descriptions handed down to us by the historians of Alexander the Great’ or ‘it is almost vain to look, after the lapse of so many centuries, for indications of the Grecian general’smarch’ (Wood 1841, 11, 39). He met several people in northern Afghanistan who claimed to be descendants of Alexander, and found such claims uncompelling: ‘Among arude and half savage people, not given to chronicle their doings, and with whom books and men to read them are equally rare, we would search in vain for valid evidence, either in support or refutation of these pretensions’ (Wood 1841, 372). Major Henry W. Bellew, author of the third source named by Kipling’snarrator, was an army surgeon who had travelled in Afghanistan and Chinese Turkestan. He wrote several books on Afghanistan and the Pashto language, but Kipling’sreference is specifically to the publication of alecture he delivered in 1879 on ‘Kafristan [sic] and the Kafirs’ at the United
123RACHEL MAIRS Services Institute in Simla (Bellew 1879). As Kipling’snarrator states, Bellew’saccount is indeed ‘sketchy and inaccurate’ (Marx 1999, 50). In contrast to Wood, he does put faith in local accounts of descent from Alexander: ‘their claim to this ancestry is not without some foundation for we are told by the historians of Alexander’sAsiatic conquests that the king married the fair Roshana, anoted beauty, the daughter of anoble of the district which is now known as Roshan; whilst from the same authorities we learn that 10,000 of his Greek soldiers had taken to themselves wives of the country’ (Bellew 1879, 14). This is the story preferred by Dravot and Carnehan, although the comments of Kipling’snarrator may suggest that he does not give it so much credence. Finally there is H. G. Raverty’sNotes on Káfiristan (Raverty 1859), used as asource by Bellew, and itself drawing on Wood (Marx 1999, 50). Like Bellew and Wood, Raverty was also an officer in the British Indian Army. He published on Afghanistan and the Pashto language. He cites Wood on the claim to descent from Alexander in Wakhan, and appears to have asimilar view of such claims. Although no other sources of information on Kafiristan are named explicitly in The Man Who Would Be King, the fact that Raverty’sarticle was published in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal suggests that Kipling may also have drawn on other writings in this journal. The JASB covered awide and eclectic range of topics, but one of its staples in the nineteenth century was accounts by British soldiers of their attempts to trace the routes of Alexander in the North-West, or find ‘evidence’ (archaeological remains, oral history, human physical characteristics) of his presence (Mairs 2018; Mairs forthcoming). Kipling had arich range of written resources at his disposal. His father, John Lockwood Kipling, was curator of the Lahore Museum, which had splendid collections of Gandharān art and Graeco-Bactrian and Indo-Greek coins (Rodgers 1891; Smith 1889, which includes aDescriptive list of the principal Buddhist sculptures in the Lahore Museum supplied by John Lockwood Kipling himself). It is probable that these collections, too, served as sources of inspiration for Kipling’sfictional account of lost descendants of Alexander in Kafiristan. ‘Graeco-Buddhist’ sculptures are certainly mentioned in his later novel Kim (1901), whose opening scenes take place at the Lahore Museum. The Man Who Would Be King is not, of course, principally about the Graeco-Bactrian and Indo-Greek kingdoms, but rather about their precursor– Alexander– and putative successors– the British in India. At the time the novella was published, there was very little available modern scholarship specifically on these kingdoms. Ancient authors such as Polybios and the Alexander historians were used by the writers whom Kipling cites, but he does not seem to have used them directly himself. Kipling’schoice of the notion of lost Greek descendants in Kafiristan as anarrative ‘MacGuffin’ is in fitting with how other writers in British India used the topic: as asubject worthy of investigation principally because it was thought to reflect on the nature, significance and legitimacy of British rule in India. KONIEC ‘ZGODY NARODÓW’ [THE END OF THE ‘CONCORD OF NATIONS’] The life history of Teodor Parnicki (1908–1988) almost reads as an historical novel itself (on his life and works, see Skalmowski 1999). Born in Berlin to aPolish father and Polish-Jewish mother, he spent most of his early life in Russia and spoke Russian as his first language. In 1920 he ran away from his military school in Vladivostok across the border to Harbin in China, where he joined the émigré Polish community and started to use the Polish language for the first time (see Bourkane 2015 and Bourkane 2018 on the influence of Parnicki’stime in China on his work). He studied at the Polish university in Lwów, present-day Ukraine, during
124 STUDIA HERCYNIA XXV/1 which time he travelled in Turkey and southern Europe. During World War II he was first deported to Kazakhstan, then worked for the Polish Embassy in Moscow and Tehran, before spending ashort time in England, and alonger period in Mexico City. Parnicki spent the last two decades of his life in Warsaw. His novel Koniec ‘Zgody Narodów’ was written in Mexico and published in Paris. The eponymous ‘Concord of Nations’ is aGraeco-Bactrian ship on the Oxus. Its plot, which might be better characterised as ‘historical science fiction’ rather than more straightforward ‘historical fiction’ (Jamroziak 1978), almost defies concise summary: The action of Parnicki’sbook takes place in the year 179 BC and is located on the board of the main ship of the dynasty, floating on the Oxus river. The ship, isolated from the outside world, is ascene of the ‘great adventure’ of the two main protagonists: Heliodor, the old top agent of the dynasty’ssecret service and his wife, Dionea. The immense ship, whose name was recently converted to the current watchword of the dynasty, ‘The Concord of Nations of the Heart of Asia,’ becomes apeculiar microcosm, in which the complex political play slowly unveils deeper layers of the cultural melting pot of the Central Asia as well as the religious and philosophical motivations of protagonists’ activities. Anxiety and fear permeate ‘The Concord of Nations’ and the main characters, isolated and forcefully engaged in acomplicated interplay of apolitical investigation are bound to slowly unravel the mystery of each other’sidentity, and discover carefully hidden secrets of their past. All five main characters of the novel– three top secret agents, Heliodor, Theophilus, and Mankuras (aHindu agent of King Demetrius), Dionea (Heliodor’swife) and amysterious Greek adolescent Leptines– engage in the series of interrogations, narrative accounts and questionings, slowly unveiling the complexity of the Hellenistic mosaic of the Greek kingdom in Asia. (Markiewka 2013, 169) Parnicki’sliterary style has been described by one critic as ‘rambling, tedious, muddled… on the verge of total chaos’ (Skalmowski 1982, 82). Koniec ‘Zgody Narodów’ is certainly not alight read, in any language.2 The book was cleared for publication by the Polish censor principally because he thought that its opaque language and complex plot lessened any potential for subversion: The novel may have some analogies with the current reality (the choice of the hero himself– the head of security and his fate, the eavesdropping system on the ship, the problem of coexistence of conquered nations with the Greek masters, etc.), in particular fragments on pp. 11, 46–47, 87–90, 537–538, 596, 636. If the author even intended these allusions, they suffer, however, from alack of concentricity, not giving effectively in general any harmful guiding idea. In addition, these possible analogies are overwhelmed by the flood of people and events, tedious psychology and the difficulty of language3 (Kaniecki 2011, 207). 2 Ihave primarily used the French translation by Elisabeth Czachorowska (Parnicki 1991) rather than the original Polish. There is no published translation into English, or to my knowledge any other language. 3 Powieść może nasuwać pewne analogie zaktualną rzeczywistością (sam wybór bohatera– szefa bezpieczeństwa ijego zmiennych losów, system podsłuchów na okręcie, problematyka współżycia podbitych narodów zpanami greckimi itp.), które w szczególności mogłyby nasunąć fragmenty na s. 11, 46–47, 87–90, 537–538, 596, 636. Jeśli byłyby to nawet zamierzone aluzje ze strony autora, to jednak cierpią one na brak koncentryczności, nie dając w efekcie jakiejś generalnej, aszkodliwej idei przewodniej. Pozatym te ewentualne analogie są przygniecione natłokiem osób izdarzeń, nużącym psychologizmem oraz trudnością języka.
125RACHEL MAIRS Koniec ‘Zgody Narodów’ has been analysed from multiple angles, both in isolation and in the context of Parnicki’sother writings. Psychological (Markiewka 2013), theological (Markiewka 2007) and philosophical (Czermińska 1972; Juszczyk 2004) readings have been pursued, but my interest here is naturally in works which analyse it as awork of– and response to works of– historical narrative about Central Asia. Parnicki’sgreatest debt is to Tarn, but he also makes use of primary numismatic evidence. Coins are described several times in the novel, for example when acharacter compares an image of Demetrios IKallinikos on acoin to the image and iconography of Alexander the Great (Parnicki 1955, 320; Szymutko 1994, 74). Although some of his description of Graeco-Bactrian coins comes from Tarn, Tomasz Markiewka has suggested that Parnicki had amore direct source of information. As ayouth in China, his mentor had been the diplomat Konstanty Symonolewicz (1884–1952), who had worked on the Bactrian and Indian coins in the Hermitage in St. Petersburg between 1908 and 1912 (Markiewka 2013, 168–169; apaper delivered by Symonolewicz to the numismatic section of the Russian Archaeological Society on Bactrian and Indian coins is mentioned by Zhebelyov 2017, 67). It is possible that Symonolewicz possessed publications on these coins which Parnicki read. In any case, it seems very likely that the young Parnicki’sfirst introduction to the Greek kingdoms of Central Asia came from Symonolewicz during his time in Harbin. In 1956, the year after the publication of Koniec ‘Zgody Narodów’, Parnicki wrote to afriend that his immediate source of inspiration was Tarn: …the major stimulus to write this book was almost accidental acquaintance with an amazing work by aBritish Hellenist W.W. Tarn The Greeks in Bactria and India (1938). […] Ifound this work in 1951, while Iwas searching for information regarding Parthians which was related to my work on Word and Flesh [Polish Słowo iciało]. What Iwas looking for– Idid not find there, but abrand new world opened before me, the world that fascinated me from the first sight– the Greeks in Asia in the 2nd century before Christ. (Trans. Markiewka 2013, 169) This is also clear from surviving archival materials. While writing Koniec ‘Zgody Narodów’ in Mexico, Parnicki kept aseries of notecards containing short quotes from the writings of Tarn and from Polybios. As well as The Greeks in Bactria and India, these show that Hellenistic Civilisation (Tarn 1927) and Alexander the Great and the Unity of Mankind (Tarn 1933) were important in shaping the novel (Markiewka 2007, 167). Parnicki also found inspiration in Arnold Toynbee’sAStudy of History, the first volume of which appeared in 1934. What was it that drew Parnicki to Tarn and to the Graeco-Bactrian kingdom? So much about Hellenistic Central Asia spoke to his own experience of the interwar and postwar world. Parnicki was fascinated by the creative potential of communities of mixed descent: ‘the hybrid subjectivity of very intelligent yet fragile “half-caste” protagonists, facing complex mechanisms of politics, nationalisms, religions, cultures and civilizations’ (Markiewka 2013, 167). This has, of course, been an important theme in Hellenistic history since the time of Droysen, but for Parnicki in his circumstances it took on aparticular urgency. Like him, one of the main characters of the novel, Leptines, is half-Jewish and his experience between cultures and identities is foregrounded. It is hard not to read passages such as the following and think of Parnicki’sown experience as amultilingual perpetual exile in Moscow, Vladivostok, Harbin, Lwów, Tehran, London, and Mexico City:
126 STUDIA HERCYNIA XXV/1 ‘What can you make out of half-castes?’ ‘You want to say: what can ahalf-caste do that could not be done either by apure Greek, or apure Jew, or aBrahmin or aShudra? I’ll tell you: he can create such acommunity that has never been anywhere in the world. Not just one half-caste, but awhole class of us.’ ‘Acommunity happier than any other?’ (Parnicki 1955, 485; trans. Markiewka 2013.) Parnicki’scharacters refer to their ultimate origins in Greece, but ‘even though they try to reinforce their Greekness by all available means, it becomes clear that it is the heart of Asia that has transformed the Greeks rather than the other way round. “What has the heart of Asia done to the Greek people?” is asentence constantly repeated in the novel’ (Markiewka 2013, 171). Culture and civilization are relative: characters compare the encroachment of the Massagetae and Chorasmii into Sogdiana and Bactria to the Greeks’ own earlier encroachment into Central Asia (Parnicki 1955, 473). In this and in other respects Parnicki engages in dialogue with Tarn, rather than adopting his information and conclusions uncritically– even though, at times, we find correspondences at the level of phraseology. Tarn’s‘Bactria almost was the Oxus, in the sense that Egypt was the Nile’ (Tarn 1951 [1938], 102), for example, is deliberately echoed in Parnicki’s‘that river was for the Greek kingdom in the heart of Asia what the Nile was for Egypt’ (Parnicki 1955, 7; trans. Markiewka 2013). The relationship between Koniec ‘Zgody Narodów’ and its ‘source’ The Greeks in Bactria and India has been analysed at length by Szymutko 1994: as Żurek 2016 points out, aformidable endeavour, given the length and density of both books. Parnicki includes aconversation which playfully references the debate over which ‘Magnesia’ Euthydemos traced his origins to. Tarn plumped for Magnesia on the Maeander; Parnicki gives the original name of the ship ‘The Concord of Nations’ as the ‘Meandria’ (Parnicki 1955, 152; discussed by Szymutko 1994, 77). Like Kipling, then, Parnicki makes creative use of the source material at his disposal, in creating anarrative which bears some relation to the historical evidence, but is entirely his own. Ido not know if he read the reports of the discovery of Ai Khanoum, but Iam certain that he would have been only too delighted, and inspired, to find material confirmation, of sorts, of the hybrid literary world he had created. HORSES OF HEAVEN The American author of the historical romance Horses of Heaven (1990), Gillian Bradshaw, in contrast to Kipling and Parnicki, is an academic Classicist, who studied at the University of Michigan and University of Cambridge. As an author of mass-market fiction, who is still alive and writing in the age of the internet, there is also considerably more information available on the sources she used in her novel. The heroine of Horses of Heaven, Heliokleia, is aGraeco-Bactrian princess in the mid-second century BC, who is married off as part of amilitary alliance with the (much older) Saka king of Ferghana. She has aGreek education, practises Buddhism and maintains acorrespondence with her mentor Nagasena at the court of her Uncle Menander. Heliokleia moves to Alexandria Eschate, where she experiences aculture clash and ultimately runs off with her husband’sson. The story is narrated by Heliokleia’sSaka lady-in-waiting, Tomyris, who has a(perhaps anachronistically) feminist perspective. Indian and Parthian characters also feature. Bradshaw was already awell-established novelist, with areputation for historical accuracy, by the time she published Horses of Heaven. She has stated in an interview that ‘Idon’t like to violate historical fact. Ilike to make an educated guess, when you reach apoint where nobody
127RACHEL MAIRS is sure want went on’ (Evans 1989, 5). Her choice of topic for her new novel was received with some scepticism: Gillian Bradshaw now wants to write about the Bactrian Greeks in Central Asia in 150 BC, ‘but my agent and publishers are extremely sceptical’. Isympathise with them, though Idon’t doubt her ability to make agood story out of the period. But while her books on King Arthur were very popular, do Bactrian Greeks really have the same allure? (Evans 1989, 5) The many unfamiliar names led Bradshaw’spublisher to ask her to include aguide to pronunciation (Bradshaw 1990, vii). Fortunately for the scholar of Central Asia (and Bradshaw cannot have imagined many among her readership), she states directly in the novel’sPreface and Epilogue what sources she used (Tarn 1951 [1938]; Narain 1957; Woodcock 1966; the Oxford Classical Dictionary; Colledge 1967; Sulimirski on the Sarmatians in the Cambridge History of Iran; Zaehner 1961; Marsden 1969; Scullard 1974; Herodotos; Polybios; the Avesta), and her views on them. Within the text, she further quotes from or mentions Euripides, Simonides, Herakleitos, and Sappho. In addition to citing published works, Bradshaw thanks the Department of Coins and Medals of the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge for allowing her to look at their Bactrian coinage ‘for so frivolous apurpose as this novel’ (Bradshaw 1990, viii). She introduces the book as: afantasy set in areal time and place. The time, 172 of the Seleucid Era, is the nice round date of 140 BC; the place is Central Asia. The Hellenistic Greek kingdom of Bactria flourished in what is now Afghanistan from the conquest of Alexander the Great until approximately that date. Its history, however, is apatchwork of ignorance and controversy, and very often all that is known of aBactrian ruler is his name. Antimachos the God, Heliokles the Just, Demetrios the Invincible– we know they existed because they struck coins, but what they did that was godlike, just, or invincible, no one can say. Iam not ahistorian, and this book owes more to imagination than to learning. Icould even have set this story in an imaginary world– but Ifind real worlds more surprising and more interesting. (Bradshaw 1990, vii) The influence of Tarn and Narain, and their interpretations of the numismatic evidence, is clearest in the novel. Tomyris thinks that ‘Yavana queens do nothing but plot and poison people’, and that ‘any of her family, all they want is power: Eukratides murdered his master for it; Platon his father, Heliokles his brother’ (Bradshaw 1990, 6, 374). In an extended scene, Tomyris examines Graeco-Bactrian coins and reads personality into the images of the rulers: Ilooked at the Bactrian silver coins I’d been given as an advance salary: most of them had Heliokles’ face on them, though some had his father Eukratides’. Both kings had alarge nose, an indulgent, fleshy chin, and sharp, dangerous eyes: strikingly ugly faces and pleasant ones. ‘Do you suppose she’ll look as much like apig as her father?’ Iasked Armaiti, showing her the coins. Armaiti giggled, the whispered confidentially, ‘She might and she might not. She’sonly aEukratid on her father’sside, you know.’ ‘Who was her mother?’ Iasked. Armaiti’sface lit up as she realised Ihadn’t heard this juicy piece of news. ‘Her mother was the sister of King Menander of India, the daughter of Demetrios the Invincible.’ ‘What?’ Iasked, shocked. ‘She’sadescendant of Antimachos?’ […]