The Early History of India, from 600 B.C. to the Muhammadan Conquest, including the Invasion of Alexander the Great c28.85

c28.85

The most striking military exploit of Kanishka was his conquest of Kāshgar, Yarkand, and Khotan, extensive provinces of Chinese Turkestān lying to the north of Tibet and the east of the Pāmīrs, and at that time, as now, dependencies of China.² When Kadphises II had attempted the same arduous adventure in a. d. 90, he had failed ignominiously, as already related, and had been compelled to pay tribute to China; but, after the death of Pan-chao, Kanishka having secured the peaceful possession of India and Kashmīr, was in a better position to surmount the appalling difficulties of conveying an effective army across the passes of the Tāghdumbāsh Pāmīr, which no modern ruler of India would dare to face. Kanishka succeeded, where his predecessor had failed; and not only freed himself from the obligation of paying tribute to China, but exacted the surrender of hostages from a state tributary to the Chinese empire. The assertion made by one authority that the hostages included a son of the emperor of the Han dynasty does not appear to be worthy of belief. The territory of the ruler to whose family the hostages belonged seems to have been not very distant from Kāshgar.