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Founding of Indo-Scythians
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- 200 BCE
- South Asia
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The Indo-Scythians, also known as Indo-Sakas, were a group of nomadic people of Iranic Scythian origin who migrated from Central Asia southward into the present-day regions of Afghanistan, eastern Iran and the northwestern Indian subcontinent (present-day Pakistan and northern India). 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 (first century BCE) 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 satraps, 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 B.C., 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 ("Sakai") were nomadic people. The first rulers of the Indo-Scythian kingdom were Maues (c. 85–60 BCE) and Vonones (c. 75–65 BCE).
The ancestors of the Indo-Scythians are generally believed to have been Saka (Scythian) (Kamuia) Kamboja tribes.
One group of Indo-European speakers that makes an early appearance on the Xinjiang stage is the Saka (Ch. Sai). 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 (Saka is an Iranian word equivalent to the Greek Scythes, and many scholars refer to them together as Saka-Scythian), 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 (also known as Khotanese), first documented in the Tarim Basin.
During the Achaemenid conquest of the Indus Valley c. 515 BCE, the Achaemenid army was not exclusively Persian, and the Saka probably participated in the invasion of northwest India. The army comprised a number of ethnic groups within the Achaemenid Empire, including Bactrians, Saka, Parthians, and Sogdians. Herodotus also listed the ethnicities of the Achaemenid army, including Ionians (Greeks) and Ethiopians. These groups were probably included in the Achaemenid army which invaded India.
Some scholars, including Michael Witzel and Christopher I. Beckwith, have suggested that the Shakya – the clan of Gautama Buddha – were originally Scythians from Central Asia, and that the Indian ethnonym Śākya shares the same origin as "Scythian". This has been cited to explain the strong Saka support of Buddhism in India. However this theory has come under criticism from other scholars such as Johannes Bronkhorst due to slim evidence.
The Persians, the Saka, and the Greeks may also have participated in the later campaigns of Chandragupta Maurya to gain the throne of Magadha c. 320 BCE. The Mudrarakshasa states that after Alexander the Great's death, Chandragupta Maurya used a Shaka-Yavana-Kamboja-Parasika-Bahlika alliance in his campaign to seize the throne of Magadha and found the Maurya Empire. The Saka were the Scythians, the Yavanas were the Greeks, and the Parasikas were the Persians.
During the second century BCE, a nomadic movement began among Central Asian tribes. Recorded in the annals of the Han dynasty and other Chinese sources, the movement began after the Yuezhi tribe was defeated by the Xiongnu and fled west, creating a domino effect that displaced other Central Asian tribes in their path.
According to these sources, Modu Shanyu of the Xiongnu attacked the Yuezhi (possibly related to the Tocharians, who lived in the eastern Tarim Basin) and expelled them from their homeland between the Qilian Shan and Dunhuang c. 175 BCE. Leaving a small remnant population, most of the Yuezhi moved west to the Ili River region, displacing the Saka, who migrated south into Ferghana and Sogdiana. According to Chinese historical chronicles (which refer to the Saka as "Sai" 塞), "[The Yuezhi] 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, who migrated toward Bactria and present-day Afghanistan, and southwest toward Parthia. A tribe known to ancient Greek writers as the Sacaraucae (probably from the Old Persian Sakaravaka, meaning "nomadic Saka") and an allied people, the Massagetae, came into conflict with the Parthian Empire between 138 and 124 BCE. The Sacaraucae–Massagetae alliance won several battles and killed the Parthian kings Phraates II and Artabanus I. The Yuezhi later migrated east into Bactria and subsequently conquered northern India, establishing the Kushan Empire.
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 (c. 123–88/87 BCE) 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 (predecessors of the Kushana), some Indo-Scythians moved from Bactria to Lake Helmond (or Hāmūn) and settled in or near Drangiana (Sigal). The region came to be known as "Sakistana of the Skythian Sakai [sic]" 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 (Alexandria of the Caucasus and Alexandria of the Arachosians) 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 (Alexandria Arachosia), and six villages.
From petroglyphs left by Saka soldiers at river crossings in Chilas and on the Sacred Rock of Hunza in Pakistan, Ahmad Hassan Dani and Karl Jettmar have established the route across the Karakoram mountains used by Maues (the first Indo-Scythian king) 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 (Gedrosia), 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 (Gujarat) in the southwest.
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 c. 80 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.
Excavations organized by John Marshall found several stone sculptures in the early Saka layer (layer number four, corresponding to the period of Azes I, in which a number of his coins were found). Several of them are toilet trays roughly imitative of finer Hellenistic examples found in earlier layers.
Azes 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 (60–20 BCE), or slightly later. The Indo-Scythians were connected with Buddhism.
In northern India, the Indo-Scythians conquered the Mathura region c. 60 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 (Rajuvula's queen). The capital also mentions the genealogy of several Indo-Scythian Mathura satraps. Rajuvula apparently eliminated Strato II (the last Indo-Greek king) c. 10 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 (c. 130 CE), when they pledged allegiance to the Kushans.
The Yuga Purana describes an invasion of Pataliputra by the Scythians during the first century BCE, after seven kings ruled in succession in Saketa following the retreat of the Yavanas. According to the Yuga Purana, the Saka king killed one-fourth of the population before he was slain by the Kalinga king Shata and a group of Sabalas.
After Azes' death, Indo-Scythian rule in northwestern India ended with the rise of the Indo-Parthian ruler Gondophares late in the first century BCE. For the following decades, A number of minor Scythian leaders maintained themselves in local strongholds on the fringes of the loose Indo-Parthian empire over the next few decades, some paying allegiance to Gondophares I and his successors.
Indo-Parthian rule was gradually replaced with that of the Kushans, one of the five Yuezhi tribes who lived in Bactria for over a century and expanded into India during the late first century CE. The Kushans regained northwestern India c. 75 CE and the Mathura region c. 100, where they prospered for several centuries.
Indo-Scythians continued to hold the Sistan region until the reign of Bahram II (276–293 CE), and held several areas of India well into the first millennium; Kathiawar and Gujarat were under Western Satrap rule until the fifth century. Rudradaman I's exploits are inscribed in the Junagadh rock inscription. During his campaigns, Rudradaman conquered the Yaudheyas and defeated the Satavahana Empire. The Western Satraps were conquered by the Gupta emperor Chandragupta II (also known as Vikramaditya).
Text from the Wikipedia article “Indo-Scythian Kingdom”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.