The Early History of India, from 600 B.C. to the Muhammadan Conquest, including the Invasion of Alexander the Great c28.23

c28.23

A tribe of Turkī nomads, known to Chinese authors as the Hiung-nū, succeeded in inflicting upon a neighbouring and rival horde of the same stock a decisive defeat before the middle of the second century B. C. The date of this event is stated as 165 B. C. by most scholars, while Dr. Franke gives the limiting dates as 174 and 160 B. C. The Yüe-chi were compelled to quit the lands which they occupied in the province of Kan-suh in North-western China, and to migrate westwards in search of fresh pasture-grounds. The moving horde mustered a force of bowmen, estimated to number from one hundred to two hundred thousand; and the whole multitude must have comprised, at least, from half a million to a million persons of all ages and both sexes.¹