You can read Greek and speak Persian.

But you don’t know it yet.

Last year, I sat down with one of my friends in the office and told him that he could try reading Greek. Lackadaisical at first, his perception changed within minutes. As I explained with examples, he could use his previous knowledge to read Greek.

In fact, Dear Reader, You too can try your hand on Greek.

Read the word — Αλέξανδρος.

At first, you might feel terrified but slowly you would realize, like my friend, that most of the Greek letters have been taught to you in Science.

A is Alpha.

λ is Lambda.

έ is Epsilon.

ξ is Xi(this you might not know)

α is Alpha.

ν is Nu.

δ is Delta.

ρ is Rho.

ο is Omicron.

ς is Sigma (this one also you might not know).

Now, all you have to do is to speak the first letter of each alphabet and join all those sounds together to decipher the word.

The word is Alexandros. It won’t be exact,

Cool, Right ?. This is called Greek Alpha-bet. ( where α — alpha, β is Beta).

Once upon a time in deep deep past, North-India was ruled by Central Asians tribes like Kushanas.

As Bactria enjoyed a position that was geographically critical, Bactrian (Vahalika) language was the lingua franca of that time.

We are talking about the period around 200 BCE to 300 CE.

Since you now know Greek, help me know what is written on this Bactrian Kushana coin.

What’s written on the left ?

B — O — Δ — Δ — O

You perhaps know that the guy on the coin is none other than Shakyamuni Gotamiputra, popularly known as Buddha. In Bactrian, he was called BODDO.

You are reading 2000 year old Bactrian in Greek alphabet, awesome!.