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464 POLITICAL HISTORY OF ANCIENT INDIA coinage. The obverse design gives us a new lifelike representation of the monarch. The reverse is confined to the worship of Siva, which was gaining ground since the days of the Siva-Bhagavatas mentioned by Patanjali. In the Kharoshthi inscription Kadphises II is called "the great king, the king of kings, lord of the whole world, the Mahisvara, the defender
" 3
We learn from Yu-Houan, the author of the Wei-lio 4 which was composed between A.D. 239-265 and covers the period of the Wei down to the reign of the emperor Ming (227-239),5 that the Yue-chi power was flourishing in Kipin (Kapiśa-Gandhara), Ta-hia (Oxus valley), Kaofou (Kabul) and Tien-tchou (India) as late as the second quarter of the third century A.D. But the early Chinese annalists are silent about the names of the successors of Yen-kao-tchen (Kadphises II). Chinese sources, however, refer to a king of the Ta-Yue-chi named Po-tiao or Puad'ieu (possibly Vasudeva) who sent an embassy to the Chinese emperor in the year 230.6 Inscriptions discovered in India have preserved the names with dates of the following great Kushan sovereigns besides the Kadphises group, viz., Kanishka I (1-23), Vasishka (24-28), Huvishka
1 A silver piece resembling the ordinary small copper type of Vima Kadphises. is also known (Whitehead, Indo-Greek Coins, 174). Other silver coins of the monarch are apparently referred to by Marshall (Guide to Taxila, 1918. 81). A silver coin of Kanishka is also known (ASI, AR, 1925-26 pl, lxf). Smith (EHI, p. 270) and others make mention of silver coins of Huvishka.
2 V, 2, 76; cf. Śaiva, Panini, IV, 1, 112.
3 As already stated Sten Konow finds the name of Vima (Uvima) Kavthisa (Kadphises?) in the Khalatse (Ladakh) inscription of the year 187 (?). Corpus. II. i. 81. The identity of the King in question is, however, uncertain.
4
A History of the Wei Dynasty (A.D. 220-264).
5. Corpus, II, i. lv.
6 Corpus, II, i, lxxvii.
7 See JRAS., 1913, 980; 1924, p. 400. "Three Mathura Inscriptions and their bearing on the Kushan Dynasty" by Dayārām Sahni; and IHQ., Vol. III (1927), p. 853, "Further Kanishka Notes" by Sten Konow.
8 If Vasishka be identical with Vas Kushana of a Sanchi epigraph, his reign.
