The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c31.108

v1.c31.108

The precise date at which the Pahlava suzerainty in India came to an end is unknown, but it undoubtedly lies within the comparatively narrow limits marked by the years 45 and 64 A.D.—the last recorded year of Gondopharnes and the earliest mention of a Kushāṇa king on an Indian monument. But the Çakas and Pahlavas, although they had lost the proud predominance which they once held, had by no means ceased to play a part in Indian history. Like the Yavanas, they continue for some centuries to be mentioned in Indian inscriptions in a manner which shows that they still formed organised communities; and there is evidence to show that they still governed their own states, no doubt as feudatories more or less nominal of the Kushāṇas. In the last part of the first century A.D. their original Indian settlements in the country of the Indus delta continued to be ruled by princes of their own race whom the author of the *Periplus* calls Parthian (Pahlava) and describes as turbulent chiefs perpetually engaged in turning one another out¹. But that these princes of foreign origin who governed the country of the lower Indus had at this period been forced to acknowledge the suzerainty of the Kushāṇas, is proved by the Suë Vihāra inscription in the Bahāwalpur State which is dated in a regnal year of Kanishka (year 11 = 89 A.D.)².