1.2 - further and farther, the Qin Dynasty??

[keravnos]

What actually were the relationships between the Hellenic states and the Chinese? How much did they know of eachother?

Chinese knew of the Greeks in Ferghana valley (where Alexandreia Eschate is located) and called it Da Yuan, meaning "Great Ionia". Ionians or Yona( in persian) or Yavana( in Sanskrit) were a subtribe of the Greeks who lived in the western shores of Asia Minor. After the failed Ionian rebellion (which also led to the Persian wars between Achaimenid Persia and the greek city states) the surviving rebels were sent to Baktria mostly (Alexander found Greeks already living there when he invaded) and a few to India (Panini's grammar of Sanskrit mentions an example of a Yavana a century before Alexandros reached India).

-It has also been suggested that present day Begram in Afghanistan was originally Pergamon named as such by the Ionians of Pergamon resettled there-

Now back to the chinese and definite interactions between them and the Bactrians/IndoGreeks, well the answer is that all evidence pointing to that direction are inconclusive, but they do exist.

-IndoGreek coins that used a chinese analogy in their material.
-Many statues/artefacts in present day China which demonstrate that there was a definite connection between Bactria and Qin.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sampul_tapestry
and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:UrumqiSoldier.jpg

There was also some questions as to whether there was some influence in the creation of the
Terracota army guarding First emperor Chi Huang Ti or Shi Huang Di (sorry for the incorrect spelling, not a Chinese speaker) had anything to do with Greek sculpting and its techniques. Especially so, as the army was painted in very bright colours,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:T...tta_colour.jpg
and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:T...and_Detail.JPG
exactly as ancient greek statues were. The whole issue is under debate of course, unless something concrete can be found.

So far as the Heavely horses incident is concerned, Tarn thinks that the city that was besieged wasn't Alexandreia Eschate but Cyropolis, the easternmost city founded as a guardian to its empire byAchaimenid king Cyros the great (Kurush in Persian). By that time it wasn't greek controlled, it was probably been held by a Kushana ruler, but Greeks did exist there in substantial numbers, and what the defenders did (in terms of besieging tricks) was deffinitely something that Greeks would do in case of siege... meaning building a second wall in the inner city if the first one would be undermined, and so forth.