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As students of history are well aware, Alexander the Great and his army began a massive military campaign in 334 BCE, which resulted in Macedonians establishing many Greek cities across a wide swath of Southeast Asia. His rule, and that of his successors, would eventually reach all the way to the Indian subcontinent.

Alexander and his army conquered great tracts of land between Greece and India. But in the ancient state of Bactria, the Greek presence became much more prominent than in areas that were far closer to Greece.

The Kingdom of Bactria was located north of the Hindu Kush mountain range and south of the Amu Darya river, on the plateau where Afghanistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan are today.

After the death of Alexander, his empire was divided up among the generals in his army. Bactria became a part of the Seleucid Empire, named after its founder, General Seleucus.

Seleucus I and his son Antiochus I went on to establish a great many Greek towns. The Greek presence was so overpowering that the Greek language remained prominent in the region for some time.

However, one of the lesser-known reasons for the overwhelming Greek cultural influence in the region was the mass deportations of Greeks to Bactria. During the reign of Darius I, every single one of the inhabitants of the Greek city of Barca, in Cyrenaica, were deported to Bactria for refusing to surrender suspected assassins to the authorities.

The Persian King Xerxes also sent prisoners to the area. The “Branchidae” were the descendants of Greek priests who had once lived near Didyma and who had surrendered the temple to him. The Greek historian Herodotus also records a Persian commander threatening to enslave daughters of the revolting Ionians and send them to Bactria.

Diodotus I, the satrap, or ruler, of Bactria declared independence from the Seleucid kings in the year 245 BCE, conquering Sogdia and becoming the founder of the great Greco-Bactrian Kingdom. Diodotus and his successors resisted continued attacks from the Seleucids, particularly from Antiochus III the Great.
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The Greco-Bactrians became very powerful militarily and succeeded in expanding their territory as far as present-day India.

The Greeks who had instigated the Bactrian revolt had become extremely wealthy, partially due to the great fertility of their country. Their great wealth enabled them to become masters not only of Bactria, but also of India.

The Greco-Bactrians used the Greek language for administrative purposes, and the local languages were also influenced by Hellenism, as suggested by their adoption of the Greek alphabet and some Greek words.
Bactrian King Euthydemus I and his son Demetrius I crossed the Hindu Kush mountains and began their conquest of the Indus valley. Within a short time they were so powerful that a Greek empire seemed to be on the rise in the East.

However, corruption and internal feuds tore the nascent empire apart. When Demetrius advanced far east of the Indus River, one of his generals, Eucratides, pronounced himself king of Bactria.

Usurpers suddenly arose in every province. All of them desired to be kings, and they fought bitterly against each other.



Many of them did become kings, as evidenced by the many gold coins found centuries later in Afghanistan. But they were kings only within their own provinces. The internecine wars between them had taken a great and irreversible toll, destroying much of what had made their societies advanced and diminishing the Hellenic element.

After Demetrius and Eucratides, the kings abandoned the Attic standard of coinage and introduced a native one, to attract support from non-Greeks.
Sources https://greekasia.blogspot.com/2019/05/bactria-ancient-greek-state-in.html
and https://greekasia.blogspot.com/2019/05/demetrius-of-bactria-invincible_22.html