
Why is there ancient Greek text on Afghan banknotes? - blinskey
https://llewelynmorgan.com/2017/02/21/nota-bene/
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kalamaya
Afghan here.

When I was a kid, my dad would tell me about our clan's origin story.

Basically, as Pashtuns (and some other ethnicities mixed in there), we trace
our origins to Ancient Greece, and not just that, but as descendants of great
greek conquerors who came and eventually settled on that land. Our origin
story is all oral, (since my dad told me, and his dad told him, etc etc down
the generations), so I am not sure how to corroborate them, but various things
of the Afghan culture are linked to practices from Greece, etc.

I remember listening to his stories as a kid and not really caring, but now
that I am older, they are really quite interesting!

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seesomesense
Was your clan of the Hazara group ?

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kalamaya
Pashtun primarily (I think > 80%?), although we have a mix of Haraza, some
Nuristani, Turkmen, etc in our bloodlines. The Hazara mix comes primarily from
the maternal sides though.

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coldtea
Err, because Afghanistan was conquered and became part of the hellenistic
kingdoms created by Alexander the Great?

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gumby
The last half of the article gets into that. Sure, of course that was the
case, but it was also later taken over by the Persian muslim invasion, so why
the greek motif?

He covers two questions: 2- how it got there at all and 2 - why it appears on
the note.

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wutangson1
But the author didn't get it right though. His conclusion- "By highlighting
its Greek heritage, Afghanistan could claim a share of the classical origins
of Europe and the West", aspiring to "the 'civilizational norms' of the
developed world"\- is a tired formula of western Orientalism. The Seleucid
Greek culture has had an enduring impact on the people and culture of
Afghanistan, as anyone can see by the Buddhas there which matched the muscled
aesthetic of Apollo statutes, as opposed to usual image of the sitting Buddhas
in China. Greek culture wasn't some attempt to manufacture legitimacy for
national boundaries in the '30s. Interestingly, it seems that the desire to
inherit the legacy of Alexander the Great's feats is not limited to the people
in his kingdom. After all, Sean Connery in the film "The Man who would be
King" is one of the more famous depictions of Kipling's novella on wayward
westerners trying to capture an Alexander glory from the locals, including
Civilization V, Star Trek episodes, Jimmy Buffet songs, etc.

Also: Once the Taliban took over, I think everyone can agree that they
represented the polar opposite of modernity and ties to Europe. Despite
destroying the Buddhas, they did not destroy the Greek antiquities or scrub
the Greek from their money.

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gillianlish
except of course that some greeks were buddhist but whatever.

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coldtea
It was not that 'some greeks were buddhist" (an insignificant number might
have been), but in that some buddhists in those areas were influenced by the
ancient greeks / greek culture which arrived there with Alexander the Great.

So it's the other way around mostly. E.g. you can find statues of Buddha after
that interaction that are clearly influenced by hellenic sculptures (in their
look and aesthetics), but not the inverse (greek e.g. Apollo statues
influenced by Buddhist statues).

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command_codes
True but some Greeks really were Buddhist. Remember Bactria is pretty far from
Greece

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dsfyu404ed
TL;DR It had something to do with a random dude named Alex

