Political History of Ancient India, from the Accession of Parikshit to the Extinction of the Gupta Dynasty c18.s2.9

c18.s2.9

The power of Gondophernes did not probably in the beginning extend to the Gandhāra region. His rule seems to have been restricted at first to Southern Afghānistān.¹ He succeeded, however, in annexing the Peshāwar district before the twenty-sixth year of his reign. There is no epigraphic evidence that he conquered Eastern Gandhāra (Taxila) though he certainly wrested some provinces from the Azes family. The story of the supersession of the rule of Azes II by him in one of the Scythian provinces is told by the coins of Aspavarman. The latter at first acknowledged the suzerainty of Azes (II) but later on obeyed Gondophernes as his overlord. Evidence of the ousting of Śaka rule by the Parthians in the Lower Indus Valley is furnished by the author of the Periplus in whose time (about 60 to 80 A.D.) Minnagara, the metropolis of Scythia, *i.e.*, the Śaka kingdom in the Lower Indus Valley, was subject to Parthian princes who were constantly driving each other out. If Sten Konow and Sir John Marshall are right in reading the name of Aja-Aya or Azes in the Kalawān Inscription of 134 and the Taxila Inscription of 136, then it is possible that Śaka rule survived in a part of Eastern Gandhāra,² while Peshāwar and the Lower Indus Valley passed into the hands of the Parthians. But the absence of an honorific title before the name of Aja-Aya and the fact that in the record of the year 136 we have reference to the establishment of relics of the Buddha in Takshaśilā "for the bestowal of health on the *Mahārāja Rājātirāja Devaputra Khushaṇa*," probably suggest that the years 134 and 136 belong, not to the *pravardhamāna-vijayarājya* (the increasing and victorious reign) of Azes, but to a period when his reign was a thing of the past (*atītarājya*), though the reckoning was still associated with his honoured name. The dating in the Jānībighā inscription (*Lakshmaṇa-senasy=ātītarājye saṁ* 83) possibly furnishes us with a parallel.¹