Indo-Greek Kingdom

The Indo-Greek Kingdom, also called the Yavana Kingdom, was a collection of Hellenistic Greek kingdoms in the northwestern Indian subcontinent, spanning parts of modern Pakistan, northwestern India and eastern Afghanistan, formed when the Greco-Bactrian ruler Demetrius I invaded India from Bactria around 200 BC. Rather than a single unified state it operated as regional polities governed from several capitals, including Taxila, Sagala, Pushkalavati and Bagram, and its kings combined Greek and Indian languages and symbols on their coinage while contributing to the development of Greco-Buddhist art. At its greatest extent in the second century BC the kingdom covered roughly 1.1 million square kilometers, but it lost the Hindu Kush region around 70 BC, its central territories by 48 or 47 BC, and its remaining eastern territories by 10 AD, when it disappeared as a political entity following invasions by the Indo-Scythians.