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482 POLITICAL HISTORY OF ANCIENT INDIA elephants served under his command.”1 Shortly afterwards the Sassanian supremacy was replaced by that of the Guptas, and the “Daivaputra Shāhi Shāhānushāhi," i.e., the Kushān monarch or monarchs of the North-West sent valuable presents to Samudra Gupta. In the fifth century3' the Kidāra Kushāns established their rule over Gandhāra and Kašmira.* In the sixth century the Kushāns had to fight hard against the Huns and in the following centuries, against the Muslims. In the ninth century A. D. a powerful Muslim dynasty, that of the Saffārids, was established in Sistān (Seistan) and the sway of the family soon extended to Ghazni, Zābulistān, Herat, Balkh and Bamiyan.5 The later kings of the race of Kanishka seem to have had one residence in Gandhāra at the city of Uņd, Ohind, Waihand or Udabhānda, on the Indus. Another capital was situated in the Kābul valley. The family was finally extinguished by the Brāhmaṇa Kallār of Lalliya who founded the Hindu Shāhiyya dynasty towards the close of the ninth century A.D. A part of the kingdom of Kābul fell into the hands of Alptigin in the tenth century. 6 ..
1 JRAS, 1913, p, 1062. Smith (EHI“, p. 290) and Herzfeld (MASI, 38, 36) give the date A.D. 360
2 Cf. also JASB, 1908, 93.
3 Or probably earlier (about the middle of the fourth century according to Altekar, NHIP, VỊ. 21).
4 JRAS, 1913, p. 1064. Smith, Catalogue, 64, 89. R. D. Banerji, JASB 1908, 91.
5 Nazim, The Life and Times of Sultan Mahmud, 186. 6 Nazim, p. 26.
