The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c31.103

v1.c31.103

Some outlines of the early history of the Kushāṇa empire have been preserved by Chinese writers¹. From these it appears that the Yueh-chi, who drove the Çakas out of Bactria, consisted of five tribes, each governed by a prince bearing the Turkish title which is usually translated as 'Chief'—the *yavuga* of the coins. More than a hundred years after their settlement in Bactria, at a date which, according to Dr Franke, must lie between 25 and 81 a.d. and probably nearer to the first of these limits than to the second, the Chief of one of these tribes, the Kushāṇas, gained the supremacy over the Yueh-chi, and founded a united kingdom which became known by the name of his own tribe. Thus once more Bactria became the nursery of a great power which was destined to dominate N.W. India. History repeated itself; and the Kushāṇas, like their predecessors, the Yavanas, speedily became masters of the adjacent territories lying to the south of the Hindu Kush, that is to say, the modern Southern Afghānistān, or the ancient provinces of the Paropanisadae (Kābul) and Arachosia (Kandahār). These first conquests were made, as the Chinese authorities state definitely, by the first Kushāṇa monarch, who has been identified with Kujūla Kadphises—Kujūla being no doubt a title, like the *Kusūlaka* of the Çaka satrap, Liaka (p. 575), and Kadphises the proper name; and, as they took place after 25 a.d., they were made at the expense of the Pahlava suzerain, who was either Gondopharnes or Pacores. As other evidence will show, their date cannot be much later than the middle of the first century a.d. at the latest.