Persian and Greek invasion

The second great invasion into India occurred around 500 BC, when the Persian kings Cyrus and Darius, pushing their empire eastward, conquered the Indus Valley.

Achaemenid Empire

During the reign of Darius the Great, almost all the northwestern Indian Subcontinent (eastern Afghanistan and most of Pakistan) was ruled by the Persian Achaemenid Empire.

Compared to the Aryans, the Persian influence was marginal, perhaps because they were only able to occupy the region for a relatively brief period of about 186 years.

Alexander’s Empire

The Persians were conquered by the Greeks under the Alexander the Great, who swept through the country as far as the Beas River, where he defeated King Porus (Raja Puru) in the Battle of the Hydaspes in 326 BC.

He wanted to extend his empire even further eastward, but his troops refused to continue.

Alexander returned home, leaving behind garrisons at the Khyber Pass and Bolan Pass to keep the trade routes open.

Greco-Buddhist period

Greco-Buddhism is the cultural syncretism between the culture of Classical Greece and Buddhism, which developed over a period of close to 800 years in the area corresponding to modern-day Afghanistan and Pakistan, between the 4th century BC and the 5th century AD.

Greco-Buddhism especially influenced the artistic development of Mahayana Buddhism, before it was adopted by Central and Northeastern Asia from the 1st century AD, ultimately spreading to China, Korea, and Japan.

It was mainly centered about the area of Gandhara, or modern Afghanistan, the area of the subcontinent that had most been influenced by Persian and Greek contact. Gandhara was roughly contemporary to the other Mahajanapada kingdoms elsewhere in India.

*This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "History of India".