Chalkous - Menander I

Menander I — known in Buddhist tradition as Milinda — ruled the largest territorial extent of any Indo-Greek king, and his coinage is correspondingly the most diverse and prolific of the entire dynasty. This copper issue served the everyday economy of a frontier kingdom that stretched from Gandhara into the Punjab, where Greek administrative habits met Kharosthi scribes and a largely non-Hellenic population. The bilingual nature of his coinage — Greek on one face, Kharosthi on the other — was a deliberate administrative decision, not decorative.

The *Milindapanha*, a Pali philosophical text probably composed centuries after his death, cast Menander as a Buddhist convert following his dialogues with the monk Nagasena. Whether historically accurate or not, it made him the only Indo-Greek ruler remembered by name in Indian literary tradition.