Intercourse between India and the Western World from the Earliest Times to the Fall of Rome c13.15

c13.15

With the break up of the Maurya Empire, however, came a fresh foreign invasion of North-Western India. Disturbances in Central Asia drove the Baktrian Greeks south of the Hindu Kush, where they established a kingdom with its capital at Sāgala, afterwards splitting up into a series of petty principalities. These Greek principalities, after enjoying considerable power for a time, were succeeded, as we have already seen, firstly by Scythian or Śaka chiefs, and finally by the Kushān tribe, who quickly absorbed all the petty states of the Panjāb and established a vast Empire, with its capital at Peshāwar, stretching from the Oxus to the Ganges.