The Greek calendar in India

I was alerted to the Bikram Samvat, a calendar used by Hindus and officially by the Hindu nation Nepal.

India I believe prefers the Gregorian to the degree it is a secular nation. The Bharatis have been telling me also of the "Saka" (Scythian) calendar, which is solar; but I'll keep this blog off of that one for now.

The V.S. calendar is lunisolar and starts 57 BC, when V/Bikramaditya repulsed a Saka invasion. So goes the legend. Historiography at this point in subcontinental history is... spotty. Vikramaditya may or may not be real.

What was real at the time and place was Greeks - "Ionians" as they came to be called, after the common dialect of Greek they preferred. Alexander's holdings out east, which didn't quite extend to India, had come under Seleucid rule, who (famously) started a calendar at 313 BC. The Seleucids at first held as far as Bactria but, unlike Alexander, did not even attempt as far as the Indus. Then the Seleucids lost Bactria, which at least stayed Greek. Then they lost Parthia which, er - not so much. But the Seleucids' calendar remained convenient for inter-Greek trade under their old domains.

In the first AG 100s decade Seleucid king Antiochus III re-subjugated Iran and then the Bactrian Greeks, next coming down to the Indus, naming himself "The Great". Like that earlier "Great" Greek - he didn't stay. But this time, in his wake, some of those Bactrians figured, why not, let's start a new Greek kingdom along the Indus. Menander I the Saviour (Soter) is the most famed, AG 160-180ish.

AG 256 should take us to V.S. Year One. Hippostratus minted some coinage then, in silver. And yeah he'd had to fight those pesky Scythians, as Greeks name them; hence how he'd used Soter as a title too. As long as he lasted.

I'm going with that the V.S. is the first-used calendar of northern India as would mark time year-by-year.