THE GREAT ANCIENT EMPIRES
THE GREAT ANCIENT EMPIRES
The Shakas: new invaders from Central Asia
In the last centuries of the first millennium BC northwestern India was
once more subjected to a new wave of immigration from Central Asia. In
Bactria several tribes clashed in the second century BC and pushed each
other towards the fertile lowlands in the south. This migration began
around 170 BC in the eastern region of Central Asia when the nomadic
Xiongnu (Hiung-nu) (probably the ancestors of the latter-day Huns)
defeated the Yuezhi (Yue-chi) who then moved west where they hit upon a
third nomadic tribe, the Sai Wang or Shakas, who in turn moved to the
west. According to Chinese reports some of these Shakas directly crossed
the mountains and entered the Indus plains whereas others invaded Bactria
and eastern Iran. Together with their kinsmen, the Scythians, they became
a major threat to the Parthian empire and two Parthian rulers lost their
lives in fighting against them. But in the reign of Mithridates II (123 to 88
BC), the Shakas seem to have recognised Parthian suzerainty and some of
them settled down in Sakastan (Sistan) in what is now southern
Afghanistan. There they intermarried with Scythians and with the local
Parthian nobility. Other clans of the Shakas appeared as conquerors in
India where they dominated the political scene of the northwest for nearly
a century
The first Shaka king in India was Maues. There are various estimates
of the dates of his reign, ranging from 94 BC to AD 22. Under him and
his successor, Azes I, the Shakas established a large Indian empire
including the northwest and parts of central India from Gandhara down
to Mathura and Ujjain and all the way to the coast of Saurashtra. The Shakas wiped out the Indo-Greek kingdoms but largely adopted their
culture with which they had already become familiar in Bactria. The
Shaka kings translated their Iranian title тАШKing of KingsтАЩ into Greek
(basileus basileon), used the Greek names of the months and issued coins
in the Indo-Greek style
A Jaina text of a later period, the Kalakacharyakathanaka, reports that
Kalaka went from Ujjain to the country of the Shakas. Kings were called
Shahi there and the mightiest king was called Shahanu Shahi. Kalaka
stayed with one of those Shahis and when this one, together with ninetyfive others, incurred the displeasure of the Shahanu Shahi, he persuaded
them to go to India. They first came to Saurashtra, but in the autumn they
moved on to Ujjain and conquered that city. The Shahi became the
superior king of that region and thus emerged the dynasty of the Shaka
kings. But some time later the king of Malwa, Vikramaditya, revolted and
defeated the Shakas and became the superior king. He started a new era.
After 135 years, another Shaka king vanquished the dynasty of
Vikramaditya and started another new era.2.
Despite this story of the origins of the two Indian eras, the Vikrama era,
which started in 58 BC and the more important Shaka era beginning in AD
78 (adopted officially by the government of independent India), historians
are still debating the issue. They generally agree that there was no king by
the name Vikramaditya of Malwa. The Vikrama era is now believed to be
connected with the Shaka king, Azes I. The beginning of the Shaka era is
supposed to coincide with the accession to the throne of the great Kushana
emperor, Kanishka, the dates of whose reign are still debated.
In other respects the Jaina text seems to reflect the situation in the
Shaka period of dominance fairly accurately. The Shaka political system
was obviously one of a confederation of chieftains who all had the Persian
title Shahi. The text mentions that there were ninety-five of them. The
Indian and Persian titles were тАШGreat KingтАЩ (maharaja) and тАШKing of KingsтАЩ
(shahanu shahi, or, in Sanskrit rajatiraja) which the Shakas assumed may
have reflected their real position rather than an exaggerated image of their
own importance. They were primus inter pares as leaders of tribal
confederations whose chieftains had the title Shahi. The grandiloquent title
тАШKing of KingsтАЩ which the Shakas introduced into India, following Persian
and Greek precedents, thus implied not a notion of omnipotence but rather
the existence of a large number of fairly autonomous small kings. But the
Shaka kings also appointed provincial governors called Kshatrapas and
Mahakshatrapas (like the Persian satraps), though it is not quite clear how
they fitted into the pattern of a tribal confederation. Perhaps some of
themтАФparticularly the MahakshatrapasтАФmay have been members of the
royal lineage, but there may also have been local Indian rulers among them
whom one accommodated in this way. Such a network of Kshatrapas may
have served as a counterweight to too powerful tribal chieftains.
In the last decades BC the Shaka empire showed definite signs of decay
while the provincial governors became more powerful. Azes II was the last
great Shaka king of the Northwest. About AD 20 the Shakas were replaced
by the short-lived Indo-Parthian dynasty founded by King Gondopharnes
who reigned until AD 46. He seems to have been a provincial governor of
Arachosia in southern Afghanistan. Though he managed to conquer the
central part of the Shaka domain, the eastern part around Mathura seems
to have remained outside his kingdom because the local Shaka Kshatrapas
in this region had attained their independence. The same was true of
Saurashtra where independent Shaka Kshatrapas still held sway until the
time of the Gupta empire.
Gondopharnes appeared in third century AD Christian texts as
Gunduphar, King of India, at whose court St Thomas is supposed to have
lived, converting many people to Christianity. According to Christian
sources of the third century AD which refer to St Thomas (тАШActs of St
ThomasтАЩ), the saint moved later on to Kerala and finally died the death of
a martyr near Madras. These southern activities of St Thomas are less well
documented, but there can be no doubt about early Christian contacts with
Gondopharnes. In a further mutation of his name (via Armenian
тАШGathasparтАЩ) Gondopharnes became тАШKasparтАЩ, one of the three magi or
Kings of the East who play such an important role in Christian tradition.
The Kushana Empire: a short-lived Asian synthesis
While in the early first century AD Indo-Parthians, Shakas and the
remnants of the Indo-Greeks were still fighting each other in India, new
invaders were already on their way. The Yuezhi under the leadership of the
Kushanas came down from Central Asia and swept away all earlier
dynasties of the Northwest in a great campaign of conquest. They
established an empire which extended from Central Asia right down to the
eastern Gangetic basin. Their earlier encounter with the Shakas whom they
displaced in Central Asia has been mentioned above. The Xiongnu, their
old enemies, did not leave the Yuezhi in possession of the land they had
taken from the Shakas but pushed them further west. Thus they appeared
in Bactria only a few decades after the Shakas and took over this territory
in the late second century BC. Here in Bactria they seem to have changed
their previous nomadic life style and settled down in five large tribal
territories with a chieftain (yabgu) at the head of each.
Around the time of the birth of Christ, Kujala Kadphises, Yabgu of the
Kuei-shang (Kushana) vanquished the four other yabgus and established
the first Kushana kingdom. The history of the further development of this
kingdom is recorded in the chronicles of the contemporary Han dynasty of
China which were compiled in the fifth century AD. These chronicles
report that Kadphises, after uniting the five principalities, proclaimed himself king, attacked the Parthians and conquered Kao-fu (Kabul) and Kipin (Kashmir). When he died, at 80 years of age, his son, Wima Kadphises,
so the chronicles state, proceeded to conquer India where he appointed a
viceroy. Numismatic research has confirmed these statements in recent
times. Several coins of Kadphises I were found which show on one side the
name of the last Greek ruler of the valley of Kabul, Hermaios, and on the
reverse his own name, Kujala Kada, Prince of the Kushanas. Since the later
coins of Kadphises I no longer refer to him as Yabgu but as King
(maharaja), the historians assume that Kadphises had earlier recognised the
suzerainty of Hermaios until the Parthians or Kadphises himself defeated
this monarch.
Wima Kadphises II continued his fatherтАЩs aggressive policy and
conquered northern India all the way down to Mathura or perhaps even up
to Varanasi. He changed the standard of the coins which had so far been of
the same weight as the Indo-Greek ones by following Roman precedent.
The gold of these coins seems to have been procured by melting down
Roman coins (aurei) which flooded into the Kushana empire after the
discovery of the monsoon passage across the Arabian sea in the first
century AD. The Kushana coins are of such high quality that some
historians believe that they must have been made by Roman mint masters
in the service of the Kushana kings.
