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The Hellenistic Far East in Historical Fiction. Ancient History, Modern Ideologies

100%

Mairs R.

Studia Hercynia

2021

vol. 25

issue 1

119-131

It has become a truism that it is impossible to reconstruct a narrative history of Central Asia in the period after Alexander. Scant literary or epigraphic sources, and the pitfalls of reconstructing dynastic histories from coins, make scholars wary of writing ‘history’ in the traditional academic sense. It may therefore come as a surprise that Hellenistic-period Central Asia has emerged as the setting for a number of historical novels. This paper aims to deconstruct the research process that lies behind the crafting of narrative in several such pieces. It will identify the primary sources and works of scholarship used by authors, and explore how these have been used to construct visions of Hellenistic Central Asia which reflect not just on the ancient record, but on the modern authors’ political and social context. The works discussed will include Rudyard Kipling’s The Man Who Would Be King (on Alexander and his routes in Afghanistan), Teodor Parnicki’s (1955) Koniec Zgody Narodów/The End of the Concord of Nations (which explores the resonances of cultural encounter in Hellenistic Central Asia for the post-War world), and Gillian Bradshaw’s (1990) Horses of Heaven (which uses a hypothetical Graeco-Bactrian alliance with Ferghana as the backdrop for historical romance).

Western, Eastern, both, or neither? Translocalism as alternative approach to syncretism and hybridity in Hellenistic Bactria

84%

Hoo M.

Studia Hercynia

2023

vol. 27

issue 1

124-150

Ideas of Hellenistic Central Asia as a cultural melting pot, resulting from the fusion of Eastern and Western cultures after Alexander the Great, continue to have considerable scholarly and popular appeal. While the Western component of the supposed melting pot generally stands for Greek influence as a dynamic actuating force, the Eastern component often seems to refer not to ‘eastern’ from a Bactrian perspective, but rather to a static idea of continuous local culture – essentialized as Eastern from a classical Mediterranean -centred point of view. Focused on the Niched Temple at Ai Khanoum and the Oxus Temple at Takht -i Sangin, this paper aims to rethink conventional taxonomies of ‘Western’, ‘Eastern’, and the convenient ‘hybrid’ by examining cultural interaction and religious syncretism from a translocal approach, sharpened by the situated perspective of communities of practice. Communities of practice are formed by people who share a set of practices which are learned by doing. Consideration of such communities not only grants analytical space for actors with different levels of learned participation but also for various potential identifications beyond ethno -geographical ones. This article explores the concept for Hellenistic Bactria and addresses heuristic problems of common assumptions of community and identity while drawing attention to various synchronous interactions and forms of identifications behind etically identified Hellenism, syncretism, and hybridity.

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2 Studia Hercynia

1 Hoo M.

1 Mairs R.

1 2023

1 2021

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The Hellenistic Far East in Historical Fiction. Ancient History, Modern Ideologies

Western, Eastern, both, or neither? Translocalism as alternative approach to syncretism and hybridity in Hellenistic Bactria