Jain Journal 1997 10

Author(s): Jain Bhawan Publication
Publisher: Jain Bhawan Publication

Page 13

JAIN JOURNAL: Vol-XXXII, No. 2 October 1997
B.C. And as Sakas were certainly Scythians,44 the testimony of Ptolemy should land conviction to at least a part of the Kalaka story.
44
The Kalakachary-Kathānaka indicates that Sagaküla or Śakakula (including the area called Patalene (in classical sources) was colonised by the Sakas before their settlement in Surashtra. We have noted above that in two versions there appear the name Paraskula in place of Sagakula. If the relevant portions of these two recensions, like the corresponding sections of other editions, echo events of a period very much earlier than the date of Ptolemy's Geography of the 2nd or 3rd quarter of the 2nd century AD., then the terms Sagakula and Parasakula are not necessarily contradictory. For the "Scythian bank" might also be called the "Persian bank", if it was included within the dominions of an Iranian overlord. We have produced elsewhere sources suggesting hegemony of the Imperial Parthians over the west bank of the Indus in a period of the 2nd and again the 1st century B.C.45 And from its situation, the Parthian empire may well have been referred to by an Indian author as a Persian empire. It is also to be noted that the overlord of the Saka Shahis is called a Sahansahi or Shahanushāhi, an Iranian version-probably familiar among the inhabitants of the Indo-Iranian border lands-of the title Basileos Basileon appearing on the coins of the Imperial Parthians.46
If one accepts the evidence of the Long Anonymous Version as correct in stating that the Vikrama Era was established after the overthrow of Śaka rule in Ujjayini, the Kālakāchāry-Kathānaka's references to the Sagakula and probably to the Parthian hegemony over Sagakula may be dated well within the first half of the 1st century B.C.47 However, it must be noted that neither are the earliest examples of the use of the era of 58 B.C. found in the region of Ujjayinī, nor does the name Vikrama appear in such instances.48 Moreover the story of the Saka occupation of Ujjayini before the beginning of the Christian Era is not corroborated by any reliable independent evidence.
44. Sakai or Sacae referred to Strabo and described by him as Scythians (XI, 8.2), were obviously Sakas. See Monthly Bulletin of the Asiatic Society, Calcutta, Vol. I. No. 2, July, 1966, p. 5.
45. B. N. Mukherjee. The Imperial Parthians in the Lower Indus Country ch. II.
46. W. Wroth, Catalogue of Parthian Coins in the British Museum. 47. See also Konow's remarks in CII, vol. II. pt. I.
48. Ibid.