Political History of Ancient India, from the Accession of Parikshit to the Extinction of the Gupta Dynasty c18.s3.120

Language: English

c18.s3.120

² *Cf.* Kennedy, *JRAS*, 1913, 1060 f. Among the successors of Vāsudeva I may be mentioned Kanishka (III); Vasu (Whitehead, *Indo-Greek Coins*, pp. 211-12; *cf. RDB*, *JASB*, Vol. IV (1908), 81 ff; Altekar, *NHIP*, VI. 14 n) or Vāsudeva II. who is apparently to be identified with **Po-tiao**, A.D. 230 (*Corpus*, II. i. lxxvii); and Grumbates (?), A.D. 360 (Smith, *EHI*⁴, p. 290). Kings claiming to belong to the family of Kanishka continued to rule in Ki-pin and Gandhāra long after he had passed away (*Itinerary of Oukong*, *Cal. Rev.*, 1922, Aug.-Sept., pp. 193, 489). The last king of Kanishka's race was, according to tradition, Lagatūrmān who was overthrown by his Brāhmaṇa minister Kallar (Alberuni, II, 13). For an alleged invasion of India in the later Kushān period by Ardeshīr Bābagān (A.D. 226-41), the founder of the Sassanian dynasty, see Ferishta (Elliot and Dowson, VI, p. 557). Varhrān II (A.D. 276-93) conquered the whole of Śakasthāna and made his son Varhrān III Governor of the conquered territory. Śakasthāna continued to form a part of the Sassanian empire down to the time of Shāpūr II. A Pahlavī Inscription of Persepolis, which Herzfeld deciphered in 1923, dated probably in A.D. 310-11, when Shāpūr II (309-79) was on the throne, refers to the Sassanian ruler of Śakasthāna as "*Śakānsāh*, minister of ministers (*dabīrān dabīr*) of Hind, Sakasthāna and Tukhāristhān" (*MASI*, 38, 36). The Paikuli Inscription mentions the Śaka chiefs of North-Western India among the retainers of Varhrān III, Governor of Śakasthāna in the last quarter of the third century A.D. (*JRAS*, 1933, 219). The Ābhīras of Western India seem also to have acknowledged the sway of the Sassanians (Rapson, *Andhra Coins*, cxxxiv). J. Charpentier points out (*Aiyangar Com.*, Vol. 16) that at the time of Kosmas Indiko-pleustes (*c.* 500 A.D.) the right side of the Indus Delta belonged to Persia. Persians figure also in early Chalukya epigraphs and the *Raghuvaṁśa* of Kālidāsa.