Western, Eastern, Both, or Neither?: Translocalism as Alternative Approach to Syncretism and Hybridity in Hellenistic Bactria

Abstract

Ideas of Hellenistic Central Asia as a cultural melting pot, resulting from the fusion of Eastern and Western cultures after Alexander the Great, continue to have considerable scholarly and popular appeal. While the Western component of the supposed melting pot generally stands for Greek influence as a dynamic actuating force, the Eastern component often seems to refer not to ‘eastern’ from a Bactrian perspective, but rather to a static idea of continuous local culture – essentialized as Eastern from a classical Mediterranean -centred point of view. Focused on the Niched Temple at Ai Khanoum and the Oxus Temple at Takht -i Sangin, this paper aims to rethink conventional taxonomies of ‘Western’, ‘Eastern’, and the convenient ‘hybrid’ by examining cultural interaction and religious syncretism from a translocal approach, sharpened by the situated perspective of communities of practice. Communities of practice are formed by people who share a set of practices which are learned by doing. Consideration of such communities not only grants analytical space for actors with different levels of learned participation but also for various potential identifications beyond ethno -geographical ones. This article explores the concept for Hellenistic Bactria and addresses heuristic problems of common assumptions of community and identity while drawing attention to various synchronous interactions and forms of identifications behind etically identified Hellenism, syncretism, and hybridity.