The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c30.s3.32

v1.c30.s3.32

With the conquest by the Çakas of the kingdoms held by the last successors of Euthydemus in the eastern Punjab, Yavana rule had already ceased in the north-western region of the sub-continent which is now known as India, that is to say, the N.W. Frontier Province and the Punjab; and Hermaeus was the last king of his race to reign in India in its more extended historical and geographical sense, which includes the southern half of the present Afghānistān. His kingdom in the upper Kābul valley was the last survival of the Yavana dominions; and it was hemmed in on every side by actual or possible foes—on the east and on the south-west by the Çakas and Pahlavas of Peshāwar and Kandahār, and on the north by the Yueh-chi, who, since their settlement in the rich land of Bactria, had become a great power under the leadership of their chief tribe, the Kushāṇas. From one or other of these three possible sources—over the mountain region which is now traversed by the Khyber Pass, over the belt of highland country varying from 12,000 to 18,000 feet which lies between Ghazni and Kābul on the route from Kandahār, or over the Paropanisus—must have come the conquerors who put an end to the kingdom of Hermaeus. It was formerly held by the present writer that these hostile invaders were the Kushāṇas who came over the Paropanisus from Bactria; and the testimony of coins, on which the names of the last Yavana king, Hermaeus, and the first Kushāṇa conqueror, Kujūla Kadphises, are found in association, seemed to justify this conclusion¹. But a fuller consideration of all the available evidence shows that the opinion of Dr F. W. Thomas is almost certainly correct, viz. that there was an intermediate period during which the Pahlavas were in possession of Kābul².