Ancient Greek dialects by the grammarians under the terms 'lexeis' or 'glôssai'. The dialects of Classical Antiquity are grouped slightly differently by various authorities. Pamphylian is a marginal dialect of Asia Minor and is sometimes left uncategorized. Mycenaean was deciphered only in 1952 and so is missing from the earlier schemes presented here: The Ancient Greek dialects differed mainly in vowels. Loss of intervocalic "s" and consonantal "i" and "w" from Proto-Greek brought two vowels together in hiatus, a circumstance often called a "collision of vowels". Over time, Greek speakers would change pronunciation to avoid such a collision, and the way that vowels
Ancient Greek art of Greek objects still further afield, exposed much of Eurasia to it, including the regions in the north of the Indian subcontinent where Buddhism was expanding, and creating Greco-Buddhist art. As Buddhism spread across Central Asia to China and the rest of East Asia, in a form that made great use of religious art, versions of this vocabulary were taken with it and used to surround images of buddhas and other religious images, often with a size and emphasis that would have seemed excessive to the ancient Greeks. The vocabulary was absorbed into the ornament of India, China, Persia and