Menander I  Menander I Soter (, "Ménandros Aʹ ho Sōtḗr", "Menander I the Saviour"; known in Indian Pali sources as Milinda) was an Indo-Greek King of the Indo-Greek Kingdom (165/155 –130 BC) who administered a large empire in the Northwestern regions of the Indian Subcontinent from his capital at Sagala. Menander is noted for having become a patron of Buddhism. Menander was initially a king of Bactria. After conquering the Punjab he established an empire in the Indian Subcontinent stretching from the Kabul River valley in the west to the Ravi River in the east, and from the Swat River valley in the north to Arachosia (the Helmand Province). Ancient Indian writers indicate that he launched expeditions southward into Rajasthan and as far east down the Ganges River Valley as Pataliputra (Patna), and the Greek geographer Strabo wrote that he "conquered more tribes than Alexander the Great." Large numbers of Menander’s coins have been unearthed, attesting to both the flourishing commerce and duration of his realm. Menander was also a patron of Buddhism, and his conversations with the Buddhist sage Nagasena are recorded in the important Buddhist work, the Milinda Panha ("The Questions of King Milinda"; "panha" meaning "question" in Pali). After his death in 130 BC, he was succeeded by his wife Agathokleia, the possible daughter of Agatokles, who ruled as regent for his son Strato I. Buddhist tradition relates that he handed over his kingdom to his son and retired from the world, but Plutarch relates that he died in camp while on a military campaign, and that his remains were divided equally between the cities to be enshrined in monuments, probably stupas, across his realm. Menander was born to a Greek family in a village called Kalasi adjacent to Alexandria of the Caucasus (present day Bagram, Afghanistan), although another source says he was born near Sagala (modern Sialkot in the Punjab, Pakistan). His territories covered the eastern dominions of the divided Greek empire of Bactria (modern day ولایت بلخ or Bactria Province) and extended to India (modern day regions of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Punjab in Pakistan and Punjab, Haryana and parts of Himachal Pradesh and the Jammu region in present day India).