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GONDOPHERNES
453
which makes him a contemporary of St. Thomas, the Apostle."
The power of Gondophernes did not probably in the beginning extend to the Gandbāra region. His rule seems to have been restricted at first to Southern Afghanistān. He succeeded, however, in annexing the Peshāwar district before the twenty-sixth year of his reign. There is no epigraphic evidence that he conquered Eastern Gandhāra (Taxila) though he certainly wrested some provinces from the Azes family. The story of the supersession of the rule of Azes II by him in one of the Scythian provinces is told by the coins of Aspavarman, The latter at first acknowledged the suzerainty of Azes (II) but later on obeyed Gondophernes as his overlord. Evidence of the ousting of Saka rule by the Parthians in the Lower Indus Valley is furnished by the author of the Periplus in whose time (about 60 to 80 A.D.) Minnagara, the metropolis of Scythia, i.e., the Saka kingdom in the Lower Indus Valley, was subject to Parthian princes who were constantly driving each other out. If Sten Konow and Sir John Marshall are right in reading the name of Aja-Aya or Azes in the Kalawān Inscription of 134 and the Taxila Inscription of 136, then it is possible that Saka rule survived in a part of Eastern Gandhāra,? while Peshāwar and the Lower Indus Valley passed into
makes the theory of Fleet less plausible unless we believe in the existence of a plurality of Saka-Pahlava eras. Dr. Jayaswal was inclined to place Gondophernes in 20 B.C. But this date is too early to suit the Christian tradition.
1 JRAS., 1913, 1003, 1010.
2 For Fleet's interpretation of "Sa 136 ayasa ashadasa masasa, etc.," see JRAS., 1914, 995 ff.; atso Calcutta Review, 1922, December, 493-494. Konow thought at one time that ayasa stood for adyasya (=the first). He took the word as qualifying ashadasa. But he changed his views after the discovery of the Kalawān Inscription of 134. He now thinks that the addition ayasa, ajasa does not characterize the era as instituted by Azes, but simply as 'connected with Parthian rulers' (Ep. Ind., xxi. 255 f.). He refers the dates 134, 136 to the era of 58 B.C.
