Indian Antiquary Vol 37

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

Page 69

MARCH, 1908.]
SCYTHIAN PERIOD OF INDIAN HISTORY.
61
reign of Haviska is dated the year 60. So we may safely assume that he was associated with his father in the empire from the year 10 to the year 45 (c. 88 - 123 A. D.) and ascended the throne after his father's death and enjoyed a reign of at least 15 years. We may safely place the year of his death in the Saka era 62 = 1:10 A. D. At the time of his death the age of Huvižka could not have been less than 80, for his reign extended over the long period of 52 years, one of the longest reigns in the history of India. The name Huviska is found in several forms, such as Huviska, Havaska, Huşka and Hukņa in the Brāhmi inscriptions.
Huviks was succeeded by Väsuşka or Väsudeva, whose earliest recorded date is the year 68, found on an inscription from Sāñci in Bhopal. Dr. Fleet bas based a theory on this inscription. He says that this Sánci record mentions the name Vásuşka, which is also to be found in the Mathurā inscription of the year 76, mentioned in Dr. Führer's Progress Report for the year 1895-96, also in the Mathurā inscription of the year 74.51 Inscriptions which were dated the year 80 and after mention the name of Väsudeva. So the successor of Huvişka was Vāsuska, and Väsuşka and Vasudeva are not the same person. This reasoning possesses a seeming validity, as the transliteration of foreign names into the Indian language was as difficult then as it is at the present day. It was impossible for the Indians of the Scythian period to pronounce the name of a Scythian barbarian, and it was still more difficult for him to write it in his own language. As a result of this we find Rājúvala and Rajula as variations of the name of one and the same person. If Vasuşka aad Vasudeva are taken to be different personages, then Huviska, Haşka, and Hukṣa wonld also have to be taken as designating three different princes. The original name of this prince seoms to bave been Vasudeva, and this adoption of an Indian name by a foreign prince was the result of a long residente in India. The variation Väsuşka may have been made by some ignorant person in order to harmonise it with the names Kaniska and Huviska. Nothing is known about the name of Vasudeva but that he also enjoyed a long reign and was alive in the year 99 = 177 A. D. The grert Kuşāna empira came to an end after Vasudeva. His dominions included the Panjab, the provinces around Mathuri, and the portion of Central India as far south as Bhopal. It was during the earlier years of the reign of Vasudeva that Rudradiman, the Satrap of Rajputana and Malwa, conquered Catch and Surat and the adjoining countries. The fact that he himself assumed the title of Maha-Ksatrapa shows that he did not wait for his paramount sovereign to bestow it on him. It is possible that Rudradāman, like the later Moghul governors, virtually became an independent monarch, but did not assume royal titles: Aliverdi Khan and Sa'ādat Khan were practically independent sovereigns. Väsudeva was a feeble sovereign, and the Trans-Indus provinces were probably lost to the Kuşans empire during his reign. Vasudeva enjoyed a long reign of 36 years from the year 62 to the year 99 of the Saka era (140-177 A. D.). During the later years of this reign, the Panjāb gradually slipped out of his hands. A new conqneror appeared at this time on the North-Western borders of India. The last years of the second century witnessed the decadence of the powers of three great Asiatic monarchies, viz., the Parthian empire, the Kuşans empire, and the Andhra empire. It was an evil time for Romo also, for at this time the reign of her good emperors was drawing to a close, and after the death of Commodus, the Great Oriental Empire was convalsed by a scramble for the purple in which all the great generals of the Roman Empire took part, For Parthia it was the third period of decline, as Rawlinson puts it, as the whole of the reign of Volngeses III is a blank bat for the occasional notices of Roman campaigns. In India, after the decease or deposition of Vasudeva, we find a Parthian king reigning over the province to the east of the Indus in the year 103. This is the date of the Takht-i-Bahai inscription of Gondophernes, which, as we have seen above, is closely allied by its palæography to the Panjtar, Kaldarrs, and
4. 8. R., Vol. III, p. 89, No. 8 (No. 47 of the list ), and I 4., Vol. XXXIII, p. 103, No. 20.