The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c31.16

v1.c31.16

The initial impulse of the tribal movements, which were destined to overwhelm Greek civilisation in the Oxus country, and to determine the history of N. India for many centuries to come, may be traced to an incident in the turbulent history of the Huns, against whose inroads the Chinese emperors had protected themselves by building the Great Wall. In the neck of country between the Great Wall and the mountains which forms part of the province of Kan-su, lived a people known to Chinese historians as the Yueh-chi. Being attacked and defeated by the Huns, *c.* 165 B.C., the Yueh-chi were driven from their country, and began a westward migration which necessarily brought them into conflict with other nomads, and produced a general condition of unrest among the tribes inhabiting the northern fringe of the deserts of Chinese Turkestān. The pressure caused by the steady onward movement of Yueh-chi tribes, numbering probably from half a million to a million souls¹, forced before it other nomads, and set up a flood of migration which, after sweeping away the Yavāna power in Bactria, was only stayed in its westward course by Parthia.