The course takes an emphatically interdisciplinary approach and focuses on the intersections, over the centuries, between peoples that can be traced back to Iranian culture and language and those of Ancient Indian and Vedic heritage, interactions that developed in the regions classically known as Bactria and Gandhāra. In particular, the course aims at outlining the cultural history of Bactria, an area geographically lying in the plain between the Hindu Kush and the Amu Darya river. We will focus on Bactria as contact zone between Iranianate, Greek-Hellenistic World and Indian World by discussing the Achaemenid presence, the role in the Zoroastrian tradition, Hellenism, the Greco-Bactrian kingdom and the Kushana. Methodologically speaking, both written sources and archaeological records will be taken into account
