Indische Palaographie von circa 350 a. Chr. – circa 1300 p. Chr. c20.6

c20.6

These Sse have usually been identified with the Śakas, who, in previous ages, had come into conflict with the Achaemenid and Macedonian powers. In B.C. 165, the Sse were expelled from Sogdiana by the Yueh-chi, who were themselves flying before the Hiung-nu. The Śakas, thus dispossessed, invaded Bactria. From this period until the fall of the Bactrian monarchy, the Greeks had to contend against both Parthians and Śakas, while the Parthian and Śakas were alternately the friends and foes of one another. It is, perhaps, to this association with the Parthians that the earliest Śaka coins of India owe certain Parthian characteristics (v. inf. § 29). The Yueh-chi, who now held the ancient territories of the Śakas, in turn invaded and gained complete possession of Bactria, c. 120 B.C. This was no doubt the immediate cause of the first Śaka invasions of India. About a century later, or c. 25 B.C., one of the five tribes of the Yueh-chi, the Kuṣaṇas, gained the supremacy over the others, crossed over the Paropanisus, destroyed the last vestiges of Greek rule in the Kabul Valley, and subsequently conquered the whole of Northern India.