Which Indo-Greek ambassador erected the Heliodorus pillar?

Heliodorus, an Indo-Greek ambassador, erected the Heliodorus pillar at Besnagar, near Vidisha in Madhya Pradesh.

The stone column was set up around 113 BCE by Heliodorus, who had been sent by the Indo-Greek king Antialcidas of Taxila to the court of the local ruler Bhagabhadra. Its Brahmi inscription calls the monument a Garuda-standard dedicated to Vāsudeva, a form of Krishna, and identifies Heliodorus as a devotee.

The inscription is important evidence for early Vāsudeva-Krishna devotion and for diplomatic connections between the Hellenistic world and central India. It also shows that religious exchange crossed cultural and political boundaries in the centuries after Alexander’s campaigns.

A frequent mix-up is to choose Dionysius, Deimachus, or Megasthenes because they were also Greek envoys or writers associated with India. They were not the ambassador named in the Besnagar inscription. The pillar itself, rather than merely a later literary tradition, preserves Heliodorus’s name and diplomatic role.