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DYNASTY OF VONONES
suggests the identification of the Tochari of the Classical writers with the Ta-hia of the Chinese historians. He further identifies the Asii, Asioi or Asiani with the Yüle-chi. We are inclined to identify the Tochari with the Tukhāras who formed an important element of the Bactrian population in the time of Ptolemy and are described by that author as a great people. They are apparently "the war-like nation. of the Bactrians" of the time of the Periplus.
The Drangians, literally 'lake-dwellers', referred to by Justin, inhabited the country about the Hamun lake (Zareh) between Areia (Herat), Gedrosia (Baluchistan) and Arachosia (Kandahar) and the desert of Eastern Persia, close to and perhaps including at times within its political boundaries the neighbouring province now called Sistan or Seistan (Sakasthāna).3 Numismatic evidence indicates that a family whose territory lay mainly in southern Afganisthan, viz., the so-called dynasty of Vonones, supplanted Greek rule in a considerable part of the Helmund valley, Ghazni and Kandahar (Arachosia). Vonones is a Parthian (Imperial) name. Hence many scholars call his dynasty a Parthian family, and some go so far as to assert that this Vonones is the Arsakid king of that name who reigned. from A. D. 8 to 14.4 But names are not sure proofs of nationality. Sir R. G. Bhandarkar calls the dynasty Saka. The best name for the family would be Drangian, because the chief centre of their power probably
2
427
1 Ind. Ant, 1884, pp. 395-396.
2 Schoff, Parthian Stations, 32.
3 Corpus, xl; Whitehead, Indo-Greek Coins, 92; MASI, 34. 7. Isidore, places Drangiana (Zarangiana) beyond Phra (Farah), and locates Śakasthāna beyond this territory, (Schoff, 9). But Herzfeld points out that Sistan is the Achaemenian 'Zrang'.
4 Camb. Short Hist. 69.
5 Isidore of Charax who mentions the revolt of Tiridates against Phraates (26 B.C.) and is quoted by Pliny (Schoff, Parthian Stations, pp. 5, 13 ff, 17;
