AHC: Indo-Greek Empire

Can it be done? By any combination of good fortune, good leadership, et cetera, could an Indo-Greek polity take over the entirety of the Indus River Valley and perhaps expand into the Indian subcontinent?
 
Nothing's impossible given Indian Princely politics and the way Indian empires tend to be built, but I don't expect the indo Greeks to remain Greek for more than a generation.
 

NothingNow

Banned
Menander I might've already done it IOTL, but I'm a bit rusty on Indo-Greek History.

Certainly, if you could manage to weaken the Indo-Scythians, and get a string of rulers the calibre of say, Demetrius Aniketos and Menander, who co-opt the remaining Mayuran administrative system, it'd be entirely possible for them to conquer the Indus River Valley, and hold it for a few centuries. Beyond that though, I honestly don't see them advancing very far, except by incorporating the Yuezhi or something, and then squandering the wealth of the silk road on campaigns in the south.
 
The Indo-Greeks did hang on for a little while longer after the Indo-Baktrians fell I believe. And as the person above me pointed out, I think Menander did something like this OTL.
 
What I'm really interested is in seeing if y'all think the Indo-Greeks could form an Empire that would influence the subcontinent in a heavily significant manner, such as the Maurya Empire.
 
What I'm really interested is in seeing if y'all think the Indo-Greeks could form an Empire that would influence the subcontinent in a heavily significant manner, such as the Maurya Empire.

OTL, the Indo-Greeks really only got going in the aftermath of the Maurya Empire. At its height, the Empire could curbstomp all its competitors. Also, OTL, the founder of the Mauryas, Chandragpta, was reputably inspired by the example of Alexander the Great.

The "conquests" of Menander and the other Indo-Greeks were probably really more like glorified raids which may or may not have gotten as far as Pataliputra in the Gangetic Plain, the largest city in the region and former capital of the Mauryas. Anyway, only transient control of large areas of N. India. The core of the Indo-Greeks remained the modern Punjub. They basically were overwhelmed/assimilated in a few generations. They just didn't have the numbers to perpetuate a noticeably "Greek" culture for long.
 
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