Some of the most unusual effects of Hellenization can be seen in Afghanistan and India, in the region of the relatively late-arising Greco-Bactrian Kingdom (250 BC-125 BC) in modern Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Tajikistan and the Greco-Indian Kingdom (180 BC - 10 CE) in modern Afghanistan and India. There on the newly formed Silk Road Greek culture apparently hybridized with Indian, and especially Buddhist culture. The resulting syncretism known as Greco-Buddhism heavily influenced the development of Buddhism and created a culture of Greco-Buddhist art. These Greco-Buddhist kingdoms sent some of the first Buddhist missionaries to China, Sri Lanka, and the Mediterranean (Greco-Buddhist monasticism). The first figural portrayals of the Buddha, previously avoided by Buddhists, appeared at this time; they were modeled on Greek statues of Apollo. Several Buddhist traditions may have been influenced by the ancient Greek religion: the concept of Boddhisatvas is reminiscent of Greek divine heroes, and some Mahayana ceremonial practices (burning incense, gifts of flowers, and food placed on altars) are similar to those practiced by the ancient Greeks. One Greek king, Menander I, probably became Buddhist, and was immortalized in Buddhist literature as 'Milinda'. The process of Hellenization extended to the sciences, where ideas from Greek astronomy filtered eastward and had profoundly influenced Indian astronomy by the early centuries AD. For example, Greek astronomical instruments dating to the 3rd century BC were found in the Greco-Bactrian city of Ai Khanoum in modern-day Afghanistan while the Greek concept of a spherical earth surrounded by the spheres of planets was adopted in India and eventually supplanted the long-standing Indian cosmological belief of a flat and circular earth. The Yavanajataka and Paulisa Siddhanta texts in particular show Greek influence.

What evidence exists that Greco-Bactrian influence extended to the sciences?

After the August missile strikes, diplomatic options to press the Taliban seemed no more promising than military options. The United States had issued a formal warning to the Taliban, and also to Sudan, that they would be held directly responsible for any attacks on Americans, wherever they occurred, carried out by the Bin Laden network as long as they continued to provide sanctuary to it. For a brief moment, it had seemed as if the August strikes might have shocked the Taliban into thinking of giving up Bin Laden. On August 22, the reclusive Mullah Omar told a working-level State Department official that the strikes were counterproductive but added that he would be open to a dialogue with the United States on Bin Laden's presence in Afghanistan. Meeting in Islamabad with William Milam, the U.S. ambassador to Pakistan, Taliban delegates said it was against their culture to expel someone seeking sanctuary but asked what would happen to Bin Laden should he be sent to Saudi Arabia. Yet in September 1998, when the Saudi emissary, Prince Turki, asked Mullah Omar whether he would keep his earlier promise to expel Bin Laden, the Taliban leader said no. Both sides shouted at each other, with Mullah Omar denouncing the Saudi government. Riyadh then suspended its diplomatic relations with the Taliban regime. (Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and the United Arab Emirates were the only countries that recognized the Taliban as the legitimate government of Afghanistan.) Crown Prince Abdullah told President Clinton and Vice President Gore about this when he visited Washington in late September. His account confirmed reports that the U.S. government had received independently. Other efforts with the Saudi government centered on improving intelligence sharing and permitting U.S. agents to interrogate prisoners in Saudi custody. The history of such cooperation in 1997 and 1998 had been strained. Several officials told us, in particular, that the United States could not get direct access to an important al Qaeda financial official, Madani al Tayyib, who had been detained by the Saudi government in 1997.67Though U.S. officials repeatedly raised the issue, the Saudis provided limited information. In his September 1998 meeting with Crown Prince Abdullah, Vice President Gore, while thanking the Saudi government for their responsiveness, renewed the request for direct U.S. access to Tayyib. The United States never obtained this access. An NSC staff-led working group on terrorist finances asked the CIA in November 1998 to push again for access to Tayyib and to see "if it is possible to elaborate further on the ties between Usama bin Ladin and prominent individuals in Saudi Arabia, including especially the Bin Laden family." One result was two NSC-led interagency trips to Persian Gulf states in 1999 and 2000. During these trips the NSC, Treasury, and intelligence representatives spoke with Saudi officials, and later interviewed members of the Bin Laden family, about Usama's inheritance.

Vice President Gore never received access to whom?

The old vaulted church was stripped down: there was no cloth on the altar, just a DJ's toolkit and his beer. Through the dark, I could see three bolts left in the wall from where they'd taken down the crucifix. A confessional too beaten-up to have been sold was shaking in a way that suggested activity inside, and where the pews had been taken out, a couple hundred people were testifying to the DJ's moving sermon. Rachel stepped forward into the crowd while I took a moment to drink in the ceiling's blue-lit, shadowed vault and the light-catching haze from who-knows-what rising between the DJ and the crowd. There was a terrific echo, each beat reverberating inside of the next, and the old stained-glass windows rattled in their frames. On the dance floor, people moved with their eyes closed and their hands in the air. I danced with Rachel for a while, but then something by the bar seemed to be pulling her eyes. She told me that she was heading for a drink and slipped out of the crowd. When she hadn't come back halfway through the next song, I glanced over at the bar. It was just a little set-up where someone had stacked a few crates and brought something alcoholic to share, mostly beer. Rachel was standing with a plastic cup, looking like she was having a conversation, but I couldn't see anyone else there. The next time the crowd split, I saw him. He stood in front of a blue light, so I couldn't see him clearly, but what I saw was memorable. He wore a jacket of what might have been blue velvet, and his hair gleamed black against his white skin. The blue haze seemed to stop just shy of his pallor, setting off his striking face without illuminating its details, and his wrists flashed white in the darkness. He didn't move, just stared and held his drink. The next time I saw them, his mouth was moving. She nodded and he took her arm. I watched them through the crush of dancers as they squeezed along the wall, and the feeling came to me that something was very wrong. Saturday morning, I woke up and saw that she still hadn't come home.
What was the man standing in front of when the crowd split?