Indian Antiquary Vol 35

Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 45

FEBRUARY, 1906.]
The Han-Annals cover the period 206 B. C. to 24 A. D. They make no mention of this reconstruction of the Yue-chi kingdom; the author Pan ku (who died P. 69 f. 92 A. D.), brother of the famous Pan ch'ao, must have known of the conquering invasion of the Yue-chi: and a consideration of the political relations of China with Central Asia at the death of the usurping prince Wang mang in 23 B. C. confirms the conclusion that such an event had not then taken place. Lévi, however, founding his arguments on mistaken premises, assigns the foundation of the Kushan kingdom to the middle of the 1st century B. C.
THE SOK AND KANISKA.
39
P. 70.
The Annals of the later Han cover the period 25-220 A. D. Their author Fan ye lived till 445, so that the establishment of the native Yüe-chi realm was for him ancient history. With the rise of the Gupta dynasty, in 318 A. D., the Kushan kingdom must have broken up into small states about the 5th century, and in Bactria the Yue-chi were driven westwards by their northern neighbours the Juan-juan. Hence, scarcely a century after the later Han dynasty, the power of the Kushan kingdom must have been on the wane. Yet the later chronicler points to a period of flourishing development after the conquest of Kiu-tsiu-k'io and Yen-kao-chên, but makes no mention of a corresponding decline.
With the end of Pan yung's biography in 124 D. D., sources of information about the peoples of Turkestan were exhausted. It is clear, however, that the period when the Chinese sway over "the kingdoms westwards from Ts'ung ling" that of the flourishing epoch of the great Kushan kingdom.
P. 71. began to be insecure, was In 24 A. D., then, the P. 72; Date of the Kushan
kingdom.
union of the Yuë-chi principalities under the Kushans had not taken place. while by 124 not only the conquests of K'iu-tsiu-k'io and Yen-k'ao-chên had taken place, but also a period of flourishing development had come to a close. A century is not a long period for such events, and we cannot, in view of this, place the overthrow of the four Hi-hou princes far from the beginning of the later Han dynasty. We hear of a considerable army being sent into the field in A. D. 90 by the Yue-chi king against Pan ch'ao. This king could be neither K'iu-tsiu-k'io nor Yen-kao-chèn, for Pan chao would have named them here in his biography, as he does in a later passage. We should then be dealing with a successor of Yen-kao-chên. We may then, with confidence, place the establishment of a native Kushan kingdom in the period between 25 and 81 A. D., with greater probability nearer the earlier date than the later.
P. 73 f.; An-si and Wu-ishan-li,
Of the peoples in the north-west, the Chinese texts mention two great kingdoms, Wu-i-shan-li and An-si, giving a description of the physical and economical conditions of these countries, which ends with the words "Eastward from An-si are the Ta Yue-chi." From the Hou Han shu we learn that An-si in 87 A. D. sent an embassy to China, and in 97 Kan ying, Pan ch'ao's ambassador, came to the W. boundary of An-si. In 101, the king of An-si, Man-kü, again sent tribute to China. Hirth considers An-si to be a form of Arsak, a designation of the Parthians. In P'an-tou (the capital) he sees the name Parthuva, the Persian original of the Greek Πάρθοι or Παρθαύνικα, &c.
Chinese sources give
no information about the internal wars of the Parthian kingdom: but we know from Justin that the Scythians were appealed to for help. The latter, however, about 127 B. C. laid waste the Parthian borderland and killed the king Phradates II. At the same period they took possession
of a part of Drangiana, and though driven from Drangiana into Arachosia, this Saka race became a, powerful people again in the 1st century B. C. and probably founded a Saka dynasty. At all events, Saka and Parthian kings seem to have reigned promiscuously over that kingdom of Indo-Parthians, which is particularly to be understood as the An-si and the Wu-i-shan-li of the Chinese. The oldest of these sovereigns is said to be Maues, who reigned about 100 B. C., if the numismatic investigations of A. v. Sallet are correct. Of his successors, Azes (40-30 B. C.) is the most powerful, and Yndophares or Gondophares (probably 21 A. D. according to Rapson, Ind. Coins, p. 15, § 62) is the best known.
P. 75; The Parthian branch of the