The Early History of India, from 600 B.C. to the Muhammadan Conquest, including the Invasion of Alexander the Great c28.130

c28.130

Absolutely nothing positive is known concerning the means by which the renewed Persian influence, as proved by numismatic facts, made itself felt in the interior of India. Bahrām (Varahrān) II is known to have conducted a campaign in Sīstān, at some time between 277 and 294; but there is no definite record of any Sassanian invasion of India in the third century, during which period all the ordinary sources of historical information dry up. No inscriptions certainly referable to that time have been discovered, and the coinage, issued by merely local rulers, gives hardly any help. The two great dynasties, the Kushān in Northern India, and the Āndhra in the tableland of the Deccan, disappear together almost at the moment (A. D. 226) when the Arsakidan dynasty of Persia was superseded by the Sassanian.² It is impossible to avoid hazarding the conjecture that the three events may have been in some way connected, and that the persianizing of the Kushān coinage of Northern India should be explained by the occurrence of a Persian invasion, such as that mentioned by Firishta as having occurred during the reign of the first Sassanian king.³