The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c26.299

v1.c26.299

Except for the somewhat rhetorical sentence in which Justin (XLI, 6) contrasts the fate of the Bactrians with the phenomenal prosperity of Parthia—'harassed by various wars, they finally lost, not merely their kingdom, but their independence'—western historians have preserved hardly any echo of the events that led up to the catastrophe. Had the vigorous and capable Eucratides lived longer, it might have been postponed. It could hardly have been averted; what we learn from Chinese sources proves that it was inevitable. Justin makes Mithradates the main instrument of the disaster, and no doubt his activity was in some measure responsible. But the real cause was the bursting of the storm-cloud, whose appearance on the northern horizon had been pointed out by the envoy of Euthydemus to Antiochus the Great just two generations before. Strabo knew the real facts, although he gives us no details, merely saying (XI, 515) that ‘the best known of the nomad tribes are those who drove the Greeks out of Bactria,—the Asii, the Pasiani, the Tochari, and the Sacarauli, who came from the country on the other side of the Jaxartes, over against the Sacae and Sogdiani, which country was also in occupation of the Sacae.’ The Prologue to the lost History of Pompeius Trogus (XLI) is even less illuminating: it contents itself with barely mentioning that the main work had told how ‘the Saraucae and Asiani seized Bactria and Sogdiana.’ The inconsistencies of nomenclature here might be easily enough reconciled. But, after all, such an adjustment would leave us very much where we were. The Chinese records bring more enlightenment. From them we learn that the Yueh-chi, pushed westwards by the Huns about 165 B.C., displaced the Çakas, who inhabited the country of the Jaxartes to the north-east of Sogdiāna and Bactria, and that they then crossed the Jaxartes and conquered the whole of Sogdiāna, probably driving the Çakas before them into Bactria and fixing their capital a little to the north of the Oxus. This was the beginning of the end. The struggle may have dragged on for twenty or thirty years, but its issue was never doubtful. Bactria had to be abandoned by its Greek rulers to the Çaka hordes. And the turn of the Çakas was to come. The report of Chang-kien, a Chinese envoy who visited the Yueh-chi in 126 B.C., is still extant. These nomads were then settled in Sogdiāna, and the report speaks in somewhat contemptuous terms of their southern neighbours, the Ta-hia, by whom are apparently meant the native population of Bactria: they were a nation of shopkeepers, living in towns each governed by its magistrate, and caring nothing for the delight or the glory of battle. At some date which is doubtful, but which cannot at the latest be more than a year or two subsequent to 126, the Yueh-chi, urged forward by fresh pressure from the East, crossed the barrier of the Oxus, expelled the Çakas, and occupied all the country as far south as the Hindu Kush. From the Ta-hia no serious resistance was to be expected. But, as the retreating Çakas made their way westwards, they probably encountered the fierce opposition of Parthia; just about this time two of the Parthian kings, Phraates II and Artabanus I are said to have fallen in battle with the Scythians.