During the Hellenistic period, Greece gradually lost its political independence to Rome, yet Greek culture flourished, both within the conquering Roman Empire and beyond. Alexander the Great and his army marched east, reaching as far as India at a critical point in history: during the formation of Buddhism. As a result, Greeks became important in the spread of Buddhism, while Greek culture influenced emerging Buddhism, as seen in statues, theatrical plays, foundational myths, and perhaps surprisingly, combat sports.
Greeks in the East and Alexander the Great
Well before Alexander the Great marched east, the Persian kings Darius and Xerxes used Bactria as a place to exile Greeks from their territories in North Africa and Asia Minor. Bactria is a territory in Central Asia located between modern-day Afghanistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. One of the remnants of early Greek civilization in the region is Kampir Tepe. This is an ancient fortress of Hellenistic design that stood for nearly 400 years, built over the Amu Darya river (known as Oxus in antiquity).
When the site was excavated in 1972, archaeologists found a host of different ancient Greek artifacts. Hellenistic-style storage pots, statuettes, and coins from different eras dating back to as early as the 4th century BC. The construction of the fortress coincided with Alexander’s arrival in the region.
Alexander established several cities along the banks of the Oxus River and on the Indian subcontinent, although most of these cities have been lost in time. However, calling them cities may simply be historic hyperbole in the sources, as they appear to have instead been garrisons. But there is one ancient Greek city in the region where excavations have uncovered artifacts that not only transcend time periods, but also blur the line between multiple cultures: Ai-Khanoum.
City of the Lady Moon: Alexandria on the Oxus?
The real name of the ancient Greek city found in the Takhar province of Afghanistan may never be known, but it is called Ai-Khanoum (Moon Lady) in Uzbek. Its ruins were first discovered in 1961, and only limited excavations were carried out in the decade before the Saur Revolution and the Soviet-Afghan war that destabilized the region. During this political instability, the site was almost entirely destroyed.
Ai-Khanoum’s artifacts were systematically looted and sold in the antiquities market, and the stone and marble of the structures and their foundations were used as building materials. But even with the limited time that the French Archaeological Delegation in Afghanistan had to excavate, they were able to locate incredible artifacts and create a layout of the city’s massive structures.
The site included a palace complex of 87,500 square meters (almost a million square feet), a theater that could seat 5,000 (more than the city’s population), and large religious temples filled with treasures and artifacts. Coins, mosaics, marble reliefs, papyri with philosophical texts, and even a stele with Delphic maxims were discovered. But perhaps one of the most important structures of the site was the gymnasium. Huge in its own right (39,000 square meters, around 420,000 square feet), the gymnasium included a massive “palestra.” And the palestra itself was made to impress. It was almost twice the size of the one in Olympia.
The palestra was an area in which ancient Greek combat sports training and events took place. Ancient Greece had three combat sports that were widely practiced: Palē, a form of wrestling; pygmē, boxing; and pankration, a comprehensive combat sport that included striking with the upper and lower body, wrestling, and groundwork (chokes and joint manipulation). The fact that Ai-Khanoum has a palestra is evidence that these combat sports were practiced in the wider Asian region.
The Yavana Kingdom and the Kushan Empire
But it does not end there. In the courtyard of the gymnasium, an inscription was found dedicated to the two patron deities of athletics: Hermes and Heracles. Hermes, the god of craftiness and trickery, was said to be the founder of wrestling. Heracles, the son of Zeus, was the founder of pankration. These two deities are important not just for their history in Greece, but because their ancient imagery is found throughout Asia, from India to northern China.
Ai-Khanoum fell in the second century BC to the Yuezhi people, who also called themselves “Kushana.” But almost immediately after they invaded Bactria, the Yuezhi people became Hellenized. The neighboring Yavana kingdom also saw a fusion of Hellenic and Indian cultures. Both regions had adopted aspects of the ancient Greek style of life, including their artistic endeavors. Plenty of examples of ancient Hellenic coinage, architecture, decorative elements, and even theatrical plays appear scattered across Bactria and modern-day India and Pakistan.
Perhaps the most impressive part of this intercultural mingling is the adaptation of religious and mythological figures. There are coins with the bust of a Greek king on one side and Hindu gods on the other. And, conversely, coins with Kanishka, the king of the Yuezhi, alongside Apollo and Helios. But nothing would compare with the rapid spread of a relatively new religion that both the Greeks and the Yuezhi would play a significant role in propagating across Asia: Buddhism.
Greek Art Spreads Buddhist Philosophy
The Hellenic people of the East played an enormous role in the propagation of Buddhism. Not just as Ashoka’s emissaries during the Mauryan Empire (c. 321-185 BC), but also in the art that facilitated the religion’s spread. The earliest depiction of Buddha, the Bimaran casket, is in a Hellenistic art style. This period saw Greek art and mythology everywhere. A tapestry of Hermes in China, and Boreas, the Greek god of the cold north wind, storms, and winter, slowly evolving to the Japanese wind god, Fujin. But perhaps the figure that we see pop up the most is Heracles, the patron deity of sports and founder of pankration.
Heracles takes on many forms in the East. In Persia, he takes on the form of Verethragna in a stone statue in Behistun. In Shaanxi, he is a tomb guardian, in the form of a Tang Dynasty porcelain figure. But in Gandhara, he is the Vajrapani: the protector of Buddha. The fact that Heracles personifies strength and fighting prowess makes him ideal for this role. Alexander the Great, who considered Heracles his ancestor, also appears as a protector of Buddha on statues and stone reliefs.
Buddha himself, when named Siddhartha, had to compete in wrestling before attaining enlightenment. This probably explains why there are so many examples of reliefs displaying wrestling bouts that are almost identical to those on ancient Greek vases. Wrestling was popular in Gandhara. Even Gandharan weights, large orthogonal stone plaques, were etched with the image of Heracles.
Heracles, Buddha, and the Spread of Greek Combat Sports
But it wasn’t just wrestling that was practiced. A statue of Heracles protecting Buddha found in Hadda, Afghanistan, shows the demi-god with cauliflower ears. A disfiguration common among combat sport athletes as a result of fighting on the ground. But the best example of how pankration influence may have spread during this time comes from Cambodia.
The Cambodian martial art is called Bokator, from lbŏkkâtaô, which means “to fight a lion.” It is a comprehensive style of combat that dates back to the 1st or 2nd century AD, though it is mostly seen on bas reliefs of the late-9th-century Angkorian period. Its founding mythos describes a barehanded warrior who slew a lion that was pestering his village with a knee strike. If the story of a warrior killing a lion with his bare hands and thus establishing a martial art seems familiar, you might remember how Heracles founded pankration. Instead of a choke, now it’s a knee strike, which is particularly popular in Southeast Asian martial arts.
Bokator, and its potential Hellenic influence, might explain how elements of pankration can be seen in combat sports of Southeast Asia. The stance in which pankration athletes are often depicted, both in vase depictions and marble reliefs, is identical to the one used today in Muay Thai. Not only that, but certain defensive postures, colloquially named “Dracula Guard” and “Diamond Guard,” exist solely in modern Muay Thai and classical Greek pankration vase paintings. Even the term for the Thai front-kick teep (ถีบ) was called týptō (pronounced teep-toh) in ancient Greek.
Could this all be a coincidence? Or maybe just two sports with vastly different rules coming to the same conclusion? Perhaps, but the documented chain of cross-cultural influences that saw Hellenic art flourish in Southeast Asia through Buddhism is far more likely to be the cause.
