Indo-Scythian Kingdom
The Indo-Scythian Kingdom, also known as Indo-Sakas, were a group of nomadic people of Iranic Scythian origin who migrated from Central Asia southward into the Indus Valley region of present-day Northern India, and also regions of eastern Afghanistan, southeastern Iran and Pakistan. The migrations persisted from the middle of the second century BCE to the fourth century CE.
The first Saka king in the Indian subcontinent was Maues/Moga who established Saka power in Gandhara, the Indus Valley, and other regions. The Indo-Scythians extended their supremacy over the north-western subcontinent, conquering the Indo-Greeks and other local peoples. They were apparently subjugated by the Kushan Empire's Kujula Kadphises or Kanishka. The Saka continued to govern as satrapies, forming the Northern Satraps and Western Satraps. The power of the Saka rulers began to decline during the 2nd century CE after the Indo-Scythians were defeated by the Satavahana emperor Gautamiputra Satakarni. Indo-Scythian rule in the northwestern subcontinent ended when the last Western Satrap, Rudrasimha III, was defeated by the Gupta emperor Chandragupta II in 395 CE.
The invasion of the northern Indian subcontinent by Scythian tribes from Central Asia, often referred to as the Indo-Scythian invasion, played a significant role in the history of the subcontinent and nearby regions. The Indo-Scythian war was triggered by the nomadic flight of Central Asians from conflict with tribes such as the Xiongnu in the second century CE, which had lasting effects on Bactria, Kabul and the Indian subcontinent and Rome and Parthia in the west. Ancient Roman historians, including Arrian and Claudius Ptolemy, have mentioned that the ancient Sakas were nomadic people. The first rulers of the Indo-Scythian kingdom were Maues and Vonones.
Origins
The ancestors of the Indo-Scythians are thought to have been Saka tribes.One group of Indo-European speakers that makes an early appearance on the Xinjiang stage is the Saka. Saka is more a generic term than a name for a specific state or ethnic group; Saka tribes were part of a cultural continuum of early nomads across Siberia and the Central Eurasian steppe lands from Xinjiang to the Black Sea. Like the Scythians whom Herodotus describes in book four of his History, Sakas were Iranian-speaking horse nomads who deployed chariots in battle, sacrificed horses, and buried their dead in barrows or mound tombs called kurgans.
The Saka of western India spoke the Saka language, first documented in the Tarim Basin.
Achaemenid period (6th-4th century BCE)
During the Achaemenid conquest of the Indus Valley BCE, the Achaemenid army was not Persian and the Saka probably participated in the invasion of northwest India. The Achaemenid army was composed of a number of ethnic groups who were part of the Achaemenid Empire. The army included Bactrians, Saka, Parthians, and Sogdians. Herodotus listed the ethnicities of the Achaemenid army, which included Ionians and Ethiopians. These groups were probably included in the Achaemenid army which invaded India.Some scholars and Christopher I. Beckwith suggested that the Shakyathe clan of Gautama Buddhawere originally Scythians from Central Asia, and the Indian ethnonym Śākya has the same origin as "Scythian". This would explain the strong Saka support of Buddhism in India.
The Persians, the Saka and the Greeks may have participated in the later campaigns of Chandragupta Maurya to gain the throne of Magadha BCE. The Mudrarakshasa says that after Alexander the Great's death, Chandragupta Maurya used a Shaka-Yavana-Kamboja-Parasika-Bahlika alliance in his campaign to take the throne in Magadha and found the Maurya Empire. The Saka were the Scythians; the Yavanas were the Greeks, and the Parasikas were the Persians.
Yuezhi expansion (2nd century BCE)
During the second century BCE, a nomadic movement began among the Central Asian tribes. Recorded in the annals of the Han dynasty and other Chinese records, the movement began after the Yuezhi tribe was defeated by the Xiongnu and fled west; this created a domino effect, displacing other central Asian tribes in their path.According to these ancient sources, Modu Shanyu of the Xiongnu tribe of Mongolia attacked the Yuezhi and evicted them from their homeland between the Qilian Shan and Dunhuang BCE. Leaving a few people behind, most of the population moved west to the Ili River region. They displaced the Saka, who migrated south into Ferghana and Sogdiana. According to the Chinese historical chronicles : " attacked the king of the Sai, who moved a considerable distance to the south and the Yuezhi then occupied his lands."
Sometime after 155 BCE, the Yuezhi were again defeated by an alliance of the Wusun and the Xiongnu. They were forced to move south, again displacing the Scythians and an allied people, the Massagetae, came into conflict with the Parthian Empire in Parthia between 138 and 124 BCE. The Sacaraucae-Massagetae alliance won several battles and killed the Parthian kings Phraates II and Artabanus I. The Yuezhi tribes migrated east into Bactria after their defeat, from which they conquered northern India to establish the Kushan Empire.
Settlement in Sakastan
The Saka settled in regions mostly corresponding to the region of Drangiana, which was later called Sakastan or Sistan, a region of south-western Afghanistan, south-eastern Iran and extending across the borders of western Pakistan. The mixed Scythian hordes who migrated to Drangiana and the areas of Sakastan later gave rise to the Indo-Scythian Kingdom and vassal states in north and south-west India via the lower Indus valley. Beginning from Sovira, Gujarat, Rajasthan and north India, and expanding into kingdoms on the Indian mainland as well as increasing influence on other kingdoms.The Arsacid emperor Mithridates II pursued an aggressive military policy in Central Asia and added a number of provinces to the Parthian Empire. This included western Bactria, which he seized from the Indo-Scythians.
Following military pressure from the Yuezhi, some Indo-Scythians moved from Bactria to Lake Helmond and settled in or near Drangiana. The region came to be known as "Sakistana of the Skythian Sakai " towards the end of the first century BCE.
The presence of the Saka in Sakastan in the first century BCE is mentioned by Isidore of Charax in "The Parthian Stations". According to Isidore, they were bordered by Greek cities on the east and the Parthian-controlled territory of Arachosia on the south:
Beyond is Sacastana of the Scythian Sacae, which is also Paraetacena, 63 schoeni. There are the city of Barda and the city of Min and the city of Palacenti and the city of Sigal; in that place is the royal residence of the Sacae; and nearby is the city of Alexandria, and six villages.
Kingdoms
Pamirs to Taxila
From petroglyphs left by Saka soldiers at river crossings in Chilas and on the Sacred Rock of Hunza in Pakistan, Ahmad Hassan Dani and have established the route across the Karakoram mountains used by Maues to capture Taxila from Indo-Greek King Apollodotus II.The first-century CE Periplus of the Erythraean Sea describes the Scythian territories:
Beyond this region, the continent making a wide curve from the east across the depths of the bays, there follows the coast district of Scythia, which lies above toward the north; the whole marshy; from which flows down the river Sinthus, the greatest of all the rivers that flow into the Erythraean Sea, bringing down an enormous volume of water This river has seven mouths, very shallow and marshy, so that they are not navigable, except the one in the middle; at which by the shore, is the market-town, Barbaricum. Before it there lies a small island, and inland behind it is the metropolis of Scythia, Minnagara; it is subject to Parthian princes who are constantly driving each other out ...
The Indo-Scythians established a kingdom in the northwest near Taxila, with two satraps: one at Mathura in the east, and the other at Surastrene in the southwest.
Gandhara and Punjab
The presence of the Scythians in modern Pakistan and north-western India during the first century BCE was contemporaneous with the Indo-Greek kingdoms there, and they apparently initially recognized the power of the local Greek rulers. Maues first conquered Gandhara and Taxila in present-day Afghanistan and Pakistan BCE, but his kingdom disintegrated after his death. In the east, the Indian king Vikrama retook Ujjain from the Indo-Scythians and celebrated his victory by establishing the Vikrama era in 58 BCE. Indo-Greek kings again ruled and prospered after Maues, as indicated by the profusion of coins from Kings Apollodotus II and Hippostratos. In 55 BCE, under Azes I, the Indo-Scythians took control of northwestern India with their victory over Hippostratos.Sculpture
Excavations organized by John Marshall found several stone sculptures in the early Saka layer. Several of them are toilet trays roughly imitative of finer Hellenistic examples found in earlier layers.Bimaran casket
is connected to the Bimaran casket, one of the earliest representations of the Buddha. The reliquary was used for the dedication of a stupa in Bamiran, near Jalalabad in Afghanistan, and placed inside the stupa with several coins of Azes. This may have happened during the reign of Azes, or slightly later. The Indo-Scythians were connected with Buddhism.Mathura region
In northern India, the Indo-Scythians conquered the Mathura region BCE. Some of their satraps were Hagamasha and Hagana, who were followed by Rajuvula.The Mathura lion capital, an Indo-Scythian sandstone capital which dates to the first century CE, describes in Kharoshthi script the gift of a stupa with a relic of the Buddha by Nadasi Kasa. The capital also mentions the genealogy of several Indo-Scythian Mathura satraps. Rajuvula apparently eliminated Strato II CE and took Sagala, his capital city.
Coinage of the period, such as that of Rajuvula, tends to be crude. It is also debased; the silver content becomes lower and bronze content higher, an alloying technique suggesting a lack of wealth.
The Mathura lion capital inscriptions attest that Mathura came under Saka control. The inscriptions refer to Kharahostes and Queen Ayasia, the "chief queen of the Indo-Scythian ruler of Mathura, satrap Rajuvula." Kharahostes was the son of Arta, as attested by his own coins. Arta was the brother of King Maues.
The Indo-Scythian satraps of Mathura are sometimes called the Northern Satraps to distinguish them from the Western Satraps ruling in Gujarat and Malwa. After Rajuvula, several successors are known to have ruled as vassals of the Kushans. They include the "Great Satrap" Kharapallana and the satrap Vanaspara, who are known from an inscription discovered in Sarnath and dated to the third year of Kanishka, when they pledged allegiance to the Kushans.