The Early History of India, from 600 B.C. to the Muhammadan Conquest, including the Invasion of Alexander the Great c31.s9.11

c31.s9.11

The third recorded great irruption of foreign barbarians occurred during the fifth century and the early part of the sixth. There are indications that the immigration from Central Asia had continued during the third century (*ante*, p. 289), but, if it did, no distinct record of the event has been preserved, and, so far as positive knowledge goes, only three certain irruptions of foreigners on a large scale through the northern and north-western passes can be proved to have taken place within the historical period anterior to the Muhammadan invasions of the tenth and eleventh centuries. The first and second, as above observed, were those of the Sakas and Yüe-chi respectively, and the third was that of the Hūnas, or White Huns. These names, Saka, Yüe-chi, and Hūna, merely indicate the predominant elements in the invading swarms, which included many various races. The tradition of descent from the first and second swarms has been lost for ages. The Turkī Shāhiya kings of Kabul, who were displaced by the Hindu Shāhiyas in the ninth century, boasted their descent from the great Kushān king, Kanishka, but I do not know of any later claim on the part of an Indian ruling family to relationship with the Yüe-chi.