Post Mauryan Age

 

Introduction

• The Indo-Greek Kingdom, or Graeco-Indian Kingdom, also known historically as the Yavana Kingdom, was a Hellenistic-era Greek kingdom covering various parts of Afghanistan, the northwest regions of the Indian subcontinent, (all of present Pakistan), and a small part of Iran; from 180 B.C.E. to around 10 C.E.
• The kingdom began when the Greco-Bactrian king Demetrius invaded India in 180 B.C.E., ultimately creating an entity which seceded from the powerful Greco-Bactrian Kingdom cantered in Bactria.

 

Background

• Preliminary Greek presence in India
  • In 326 B.C.E. Alexander III conquered the north-western part of the Indian subcontinent as far as the Hyphasis River, and established satrapies.
  • Later in 303 B.C.E., Seleucus ceded to Chandragupta his north-western territories
    • Also several Greeks, such as the historian Megasthenes followed by Deimachus and Dionysius, went to reside at the Mauryan court. The two rulers continued to exchange presents.
  • On these occasions, Greek populations apparently remained in the northwest of the Indian subcontinent under Mauryan rule.
  • Further, In his edicts, Ashoka claims he sent Buddhist emissaries to Greek rulers as far as the Mediterranean
  • The Greeks in India even seem to have played an active role in the propagation of Buddhism
• Greek rule in Bactria
  • Bactria or Bactriana, was an ancient region in Central Asia.
  • Alexander also had established in neighboring Bactria several cities (Ai-Khanoum, Begram) and an administration that lasted more than two centuries under the Seleucids and the Greco-Bactrians, all the time in direct contact with Indian territory.
• Rise of the Sungas (185 B.C.E.)
  • In India, the overthrow of Maurya Dynasty occurred around 185 B.C.E. when Pusyamitra Sunga, described as a “senapati”, was the commander-in-chief of Mauryan Imperial forces and a Brahmin, who assassinated the last of the Mauryan emperors Brhadrata.
  • Pusyamitra Sunga then ascended the throne and established the Sunga Empire, which extended its control as far west as the Punjab.

 

History of the Indo-Greek kingdom

• The invasion of northern India, and the establishment of the “Indo-Greek kingdom,” started around 180 B.C.E. when Demetrius I, son of the Greco-Bactrian king Euthydemus I, led his troops across the Hindu Kush.
• Apollodotus, seemingly a relative of Demetrius, led the invasion to the south, while Menander, led the invasion to the east.
  • Possibly at a later period, the Greeks advanced to the Ganges River, apparently as far as the capital Pataliputra, under the orders of Menander
• According to Strabo (Greek Geographer), Greek advances temporarily went as far as the Sunga capital Pataliputra (today Patna) in eastern India.
• To the south, the Greeks may have occupied the areas of the Sindh and Gujarat down to the region of Surat (Greek: Saraostus) near Mumbai (Bombay), including the strategic harbor of Barygaza (Bharuch)
• The majority of historians consider Menander (reigned c.165/155 –130 BC) the most successful Indo-Greek king, and the conqueror of the greatest territory.
• Following Menander’s reign, about 20 Indo-Greek kings ruled in succession in the eastern parts of the Indo-Greek territory.
• Later at around 125 B.C.E., The Indo-Greeks thus suffered encroachments by the Greco-Bactrians in their western territories.
• The Indo-Greeks may have ruled as far as the area of Mathura until sometime in the first century B.C.E., the Maghera inscription, from a village near Mathura records.
• An inscription on a signet ring of the first century C.E. in the name of a king Theodamas, from the Bajaur area of Gandhara, in modern Pakistan constitutes the last known mention of an Indo-Greek ruler.

 

Ideology

• Buddhism flourished under the Indo-Greek kings, and their rule, especially that of Menander, has been remembered as benevolent.
• The Greek expansion into Indian territory may have been intended to protect Greek populations in India, and to protect the Buddhist faith from the religious persecutions of the Sungas
  • Alternatively, some described the Greek invasions in India as purely materialistic, only taking advantage of the ruin of the Maurya Empire to acquire territory and wealth.
• Most coins of the Greek kings in India in Greek on the front and in Pali on the back (in the Kharoshthi script), which indicate a tremendous concession to another culture never before made in the Hellenic world.

 

Religion

• In addition to the worship of the Classical pantheon of the Greek deities found on their coins (Zeus, Herakles, Athena, Apollo…), the Indo-Greeks involved with local faiths, particularly with Buddhism, but also with Hinduism and Zoroastrianism.
  • Histories describe Menander I, the “Saviour king,” seemingly a convert to Buddhism, as a great benefactor of the religion, on a par with Ashoka or the future Kushan emperor Kanishka

 

Art

• Historians generally consider the coinage of the Indo-Greeks as some of the most artistically brilliant of Antiquity.
• The Hellenistic heritage (Ai-Khanoum) and artistic proficiency of the Indo-Greek would suggest a rich sculptural tradition as well, but traditionally very few sculptural remains have been attributed to them.
• Further, the possibility of a direct connection between the Indo-Greeks and Greco-Buddhist art has been reaffirmed recently as the dating of the rule of Indo-Greek kings has been extended to the first decades of the first century C.E., with the reign of Strato II in the Punjab.

 

Economy

• Very little is known about the economy of the Indo-Greeks.
• The abundance of their coins would tend to suggest large mining operations, particularly in the mountainous area of the Hindu-Kush, and an important monetary economy.
• The Indo-Greek did strike bilingual coins both in the Greek “round” standard and in the Indian “square” standard, suggesting that monetary circulation extended to all parts of society.
• The adoption of Indo-Greek monetary conventions by neighbouring kingdoms, such as the Satavahanas, also suggest that Indo-Greek coins were used extensively for cross-border trade.
• An indirect testimony by the Chinese explorer Zhang Qian, who visited Bactria around 128 B.C.E., suggests that intense trade with Southern China went through northern India.
  • Zhang Qian explains that he found Chinese products in the Bactrian markets, transiting through North-western India, which he incidentally describes as a civilization similar to that of Bactria
• Maritime relations across the Indian Ocean started in the third century B.C.E., and further developed during the time of the Indo-Greeks together with their territorial expansion along the western coast of India, along the Indus delta and Kathiawar peninsula or Muziris.

 

Armed forces

• The coins of the Indo-Greeks provide rich clues on their uniforms and weapons depicting typical Hellenistic uniforms, with helmets being either round in the Greco-Bactrian style, or the flat Kausia of the Macedonians.
• The Milinda Panha, in the questions of Nagasena to king Menander, provides a rare glimpse of the military methods of the period

Thus, presently 36 Indo-Greek kings are known. Several of them are also recorded in Western and Indian historical sources, but the majority are known through numismatic evidence only. The exact chronology and sequencing of their rule is still a matter of scholarly inquiry, with adjustments regular being made with new analysis and coin finds

 

 

Introduction

• Parthia is an ancient land corresponding roughly to the modern region of Khorāsān in Iran.
• The Parthians ruled from 247 BCE to 224 CE, creating a vast empire that stretched from the Mediterranean in the west to India and China in the east.
• East of the Caspian Sea there emerged from the steppe of Central Asia a nomadic Scythian tribe called the Parni.
  • Later called the Parthians and taking over the Seleucid Empire and fending off the Romans, they established themselves as a superpower in their own right.
• The Parthian Empire was founded by Arsaces I of Parthia, when he rebelled against the Seleucid Empire
  • The Parthian kingdom had its reach from Turkey to eastern Iran.
• The largest of these sub-kingdoms, the Indo Parthian kingdom, located west of the Parthian homeland, was founded in the late 1st century BC by the first of several kings named Gondophares, who was a Scythian (Saka) king
  • Their first capital city was Taxila in present- day South Central Pakistan. Later they shifted their capital city between Kabul and Peshawar.

History

• Gondophares at around 20–10 BC, made conquests in the former Indo-Scythian kingdom, perhaps after the death of the important ruler Azes.
  • Gondophares became the ruler of areas comprising Arachosia, Seistan, Sindh, Punjab, and the Kabul valley.
• After the death of Gondophares I, the empire started to fragment.
• Later, the name or title Gondophares was adapted by Sarpedones, who become Gondophares II and was possibly son of the first Gondophares.
• After a short reign, Sarpedones seems to have been succeeded by Orthagnes, who became Gondophares III Gadana
• Despite many successors, the Indo-Parthians never regained the position of Gondophares I; as from the middle of the 1st century AD the Kushans under Kujula Kadphises began absorbing the northern Indian part of the kingdom.

 

Archaeology and sources

• The city of Taxila is thought to have been a capital of the Indo-Parthians.
  • The nearby temple of Jandial is usually interpreted as a Zoroastrian fire temple from the period of the Indo-Parthians.
• The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea is a surviving 1st century guide to the routes commonly being used for navigating the Arabian Sea.
  • It describes the presence of Parthian kings fighting with each other in the area of Sindh, a region traditionally known at that time as “Scythia” due to the previous rule of the Indo-Scythians.
• Further, an inscription from Takht-i-Bahi bears two dates, one in the regnal year 26 of the Maharaja Guduvhara (thought to be a Gondophares)

Religion

• Unlike the Indo-Greeks or Indo-Scythians, there are no explicit records of Indo-Parthian rulers supporting Buddhism, such as religious dedications, inscriptions, or even legendary accounts.
  • Also, although Indo-Parthian coins generally closely follow Greek numismatics, they never display the Buddhist triratna symbol (apart from the later Sases), nor do they ever use depictions of the elephant or the bull, possible religious symbols which were profusely used by their predecessors.
• Hence, they are thought to have retained Zoroastrianism, being of Iranian extraction themselves.
• Further, Coins of the Hindu deity Shiva have also been found issued in the reign of Gondophares I

Architecture

Buddhist sculptures

• The statues found at Sirkap in the late Scythian to Parthian level (level 2, 1–60 AD) suggest an already developed state of Gandharan art at the time or even before Parthian rule.
• A multiplicity of statues, ranging from Hellenistic gods, to various Gandharan lay devotees, are combined with what are thought as some of the early representations of the Buddha and Bodhisattvas.
• Today, it is still unclear when the Greco-Buddhist art of Gandhara exactly emerged, but the findings in Sirkap do indicate that this art was already highly developed before the advent of the Kushans.

Stone palettes

• Numerous stone palettes found in Gandhara are considered as good representatives of Indo-Parthian art.
  • These palettes combine Greek and Persian influences, together with a frontality in representations which is considered as characteristic of Parthian art.

 

Other known facts

• Local and foreign texts and also artifacts have proved useful in knowing more about Parthian history but there is still a lot left unknown.
• Further, The Chinese explorer Zang Qian described Parthia as an advanced urban civilization. Trade between India and China was flourishing under the silk trade route. Parthians were known to supply Chinese silk to the Romans.

 

Introduction

• Indo-Scythians is a term used to refer to Scythians (Sakas), who migrated into parts of Central Asia and north-western South Asia, from the middle of the 2nd century BCE to the 4th century CE.
• Generally, they were pastoralists and good horsemen. They often attacked sedentary societies with the intention of acquiring pastoral grazing land and livestock – typical cattle-centric steppe nomad behaviour.
• Following the death of Alexander the Great and the gradual diminution of his eastern empire, the Sakas infiltrated those lands to create states of their own.
  • They settled down in Bactria and Parthia, overrunning the Parthians (the Pahlavas or Indo-Parthians), and forcing remnants of their people into India, one of a complex series of incursions and migrations from Central Asia into India in this period.

History

• According to Historians, the first Saka King in India was known as Maues or Moga.
  • He established his power in Gandhara and spread out his power and supremacy in almost all regions of Northwest India.
  • He defeated the Indo-Greek territories (in modern Pakistan) and established his governance as far as the River Jhelum
• Maues was succeeded by Vonones (75-65 BC), who ruled along with his brother,
• The brother was succeeded in turn by his son, Spalagadames (50 BC) who ruled areas between Central Asia and South Asia.
• Spalagadames’ successor, Azes (57-35 BC), increased his importance by capturing the kingdom of the last great Indo-Greek king, Hippostratus.

 

Extent and Expansion

• The Sakas ruled over the north-west frontier, and in Punjab, Sindh, Kashmir, western Uttar Pradesh, Saurashtra, Kathiawar, Rajputana, Malwa, and the north Konkan belt of Maharashtra.
• They also fought against the Satvahanas in India, and later entered into matrimonial alliances with them, furthering their own integration into Indian society.
• Benefiting from their earlier interaction with the Greeks, the Sakas kings employed the Greek system of rule and appointed kshatrapas (satraps, governors) to govern each region.
• The Sakas were later overpowered by the Kushans when they succeeded in taking control from the Sakas.
  • The Sakas were forced to accept their suzerainty but, after the Kushans themselves faded.
• The Sakas were finally finished off as a regional power by the rulers of the Gupta dynasty.
  • In time the remnants of the Sakas, now without any political power, blended into Indian society.

 

Coinage

• Indo-Scythian coinage is generally of a high artistic quality, although it clearly deteriorates towards the disintegration of Indo-Scythian rule around AD 20.
• Indo-Scythian coinage is generally quite realistic, artistically somewhere between Indo-Greek and Kushan coinage.
• They continued the Indo-Greek tradition, by using the Greek language on the obverse and the Kharoshthi language on the reverse.
  • The portrait of the king is never shown however, and is replaced by depictions of the king on horse (and sometimes on camel), or sometimes sitting cross-legged on a cushion.
  • The reverse of their coins typically show Greek divinities.
• Buddhist symbolism is present throughout Indo-Scythian coinage.

 

Art

Buner reliefs

• Indo-Scythian soldiers in military attire are sometimes represented in Buddhist friezes in the art of Gandhara.
• They are depicted in ample tunics with trousers, and have heavy straight swords as weapons.
• In Gandhara, such friezes were used as decorations on the pedestals of Buddhist stupas.

One of the Buner reliefs showing Scythian soldiers dancing

 

Stone palettes

• Numerous stone palettes found in Gandhara are considered good representatives of Indo-Scythian art. These palettes combine Greek and Iranian influences, and are often realized in a simple, archaic style.
• Very often these palettes represent people in Greek dress in mythological scenes, a few in Parthian dress, and even fewer in Indo-Scythian dress
• A palette found in Sirkap and now in the New Delhi Museum shows a winged Indo-Scythian horseman riding winged deer, and being attacked by a lion.

Gandhara stone palette with Scythians playing music

 

The Indo-Scythians and Buddhism

• The Indo-Scythians seem to have been followers of Buddhism, and many of their practices apparently continued those of the Indo-Greeks.
• Excavations at the Butkara Stupa in Swat (Region in Pakistan), by an Italian archaeological team have yielded various Buddhist sculptures thought to belong to the Indo-Scythian period.
• The Mathura lion capital, which associates many of the Indo-Scythian rulers from Maues, mentions a dedication of a relic of the Buddha in a stupa.

 

Indo-Scythians in Indian literature

• The Indo-Scythians were named “Shaka” in India, an extension on the name Saka used by the Persians to designate Scythians.
• Shakas receive numerous mentions in texts like the Puranas, the Manusmriti, the Ramayana, the Mahabharata, the Mahabhasiya of Patanjali, the Brhat Samhita of Vraha Mihira, etc.

 

Decline of Shaka

• The Saka Empire started declining after their defeat at the hands of the Satavahana Emperor Gautamiputra Satakarni.
• Eventually, the Saka rule in northwest India and Pakistan came to an end after the death of Azes II (12 BC) when the region came under the Kushanas.

 

Introduction

• The Kushan Empire (c. First–Third Centuries) reached its cultural zenith circa 105 – 250 C.E., extended from Tajikistan to Afghanistan, Pakistan and into the Ganges River valley in northern India
• The Kushan tribe of the Yuezhi confederation, believed to be Indo-European people from the eastern Tarim Basin, China, possibly related to the Tocharians, created the empire.
  • They were the furthest eastern Indo-European speaking people.
• The emergence of the vast Kushan Empire from the first century AD until its decline in the third century saw the political unification of much of Central Asia, from modern day India and Pakistan to the Iranian borders.

 

History

The Glimpse of Kushan rulers is as follows:

 

Religion

• Cultural exchanges flourished, encouraging the development of Greco-Buddhism, a fusion of Hellenistic and Buddhist cultural elements, expanding into central and northern Asia as Mahayana Buddhism.
• Kanishka has earned renown in Buddhist tradition for having convened a great Buddhist council in Kashmir, in 72A.D.
• Kanishka also had the original Gandhari vernacular, or Prakrit, Buddhist texts translated into the language of Sanskrit.

 

Art

• The art and culture of Gandhara, at the crossroads of the Kushan hegemony, constitute the best known expressions of Kushan influences to Westerners.
• Several direct depictions of Kushans from Gandhara have been discovered, represented with a tunic, belt and trousers and play the role of devotees to the Buddha, as well as the Bodhisattva and future Buddha Maitreya
• The style of these friezes incorporating Kushan devotees, already strongly Indianized, are quite remote from earlier Hellenistic depictions of the Buddha.

 

 

 

Administration

• The vast Kushan Empire, extending from Central Asia to Bihar and from Kashmir to Sind, containing peoples of different nationalities and religions with a heterogeneous socioeconomic background, was governed through an organized administrative system, probably in three tiers, at central, provincial and local levels.
• The Kushans seem to have followed the earlier existing pattern of the Indo-Greeks and Parthians by appointing ksatrapas and mahaksatrapas for different units of the empire.
• Other inscriptions mention other officials performing both civil and military functions, called ‘dandanayaka’ and ‘mahadandanayaka’, indicating prevalant feudal elements.
• Further, inscriptions mention two terms –‘gramika ’ and ‘padrapala’, both signifying ‘village headman’, who collected the king’s dues and took cognizance of crimes in his area.
• Thus, the information available suggests that the Kushan rulers accepted the prevalent Indian and Chinese concept of the divinity of kingship, and borrowed the Achaemenid and subsequently Indo-Grcek and Indo-Parthian system of appointing satraps as provincial governors, while the feudal lord (dandanayaka) was their own creation.

 

Coins

• Kushan kings introduced gold and copper coins, a large number of them have survived till today.
  • It was the Kushan emperor, Vima Kadaphises who introduced the first gold coins of India.
• During this period, the main coins issued were of
• The coin designs usually broadly follow the styles of the preceding Greco-Bactrian rulers in using Hellenistic styles of image, with a deity on one side and the king on the other.
• Further, towards the end of Kushan rule, the first coinage of the Gupta Empire was also derived from the coinage of the Kushan Empire.

 

 

 

Inscriptions

• The inscriptions issued by the Kushan rulers or in areas under their rule include texts in Bactrian, written in Greek script, and in Prakrit written in Brāhmī or Kharoṣṭhī script.
• The most important of this, is the Rabatak Inscription, which established Kanishka’s geneaology, with Kujula Kadphises, Vima Takto (or Takha) and Vima Kadphises being named as his immediate ancestors.

 

External Contacts

• Several Roman sources describe the visit of ambassadors from the Kings of Bactria and India during the second century, probably referring to the Kushans
• The Chinese Historical Chronicles also describes the exchange of goods between north-western India and the Roman Empire at that time.
• Further, they collaborated militarily with the Chinese against nomadic incursion.

 

Decline

• After the death of Vasudeva I in 225 A.D., the Kushan empire split into western and eastern halves.
• The Persian Sassanid Empire soon subjugated the Western Kushans (in Afghanistan), losing Bactria and other territories.
  • In 248 A.D., the Persians defeated them again, deposing the Western dynasty and replacing them with Persian vassals known as the Kushanshas (or Indo-Sassanids).
• The Eastern Kushan kingdom based in the Punjab.
  • Around 270, their territories on the Gangetic plain became independent under local dynasties such as the Yaudheyas
  • Further, in the mid fourth century the Gupta Empire under Samudragupta subjugated them.
• Later, the invasions of the White Huns in the fifth century, and later the expansion of Islam, ultimately wiped out those remnants of the Kushan empire.

 

 

Introduction

• Kushano-Sasanian Kingdom (also called Kushanshahs or Indo-Sasanians) is a historiographic term used by modern scholars, to refer to a branch of the Sasanian Persians who established their rule in Bactria during the 3rd and 4th centuries CE at the expense of the declining Kushans.
• Shortly after the Sasanian king Ardashir I overthrew the Parthians, he marched to the east and invaded Bactria (circa 230 AD).
  • Under him and his son Shapur I, the Kushans lost the western part of their empire and these provinces in Bactria and Gandhara came under the rule of Sasanian nobles called Kushanshahs.
  • In about 325 AD, Shapur II took direct control of the southern part of the region.
• The Main Kushano-Sassanid rulers are as follows:

 

Religious life

• As the evidence of the coins clearly shows, the Zoroastrian faith, enjoyed great popularity among the Kushano-Sasanians
  • The influence of Zoroastrianism can be inferred from the representation of fire altars on the coins.
• Further, Buddhist missionaries, on the other hand, continued to exert their influence throughout the whole of Afghanistan and Central Asia
  • It seems very likely that Buddhism itself was undergoing a great change in its practices, ideological concepts and rituals.
  • With the acceptance of the image of the Buddha and the expansion of Buddhism and Buddhist monasteries, the educational character of the sangha (Buddhist community) had taken on a new shape.
• Further, the evidence of coins suggests that the popularity of Shiva and Nandi had caught the popular imagination.

 

Administration

• In administering this empire, Sassanid rulers took the title of shahanshah (King of Kings), becoming the central overlords and also assumed guardianship of the sacred fire, the symbol of the national religion.
• On a smaller scale, the territory might also be ruled by a number of petty rulers from a noble family, known as Shahrdar, overseen directly by the shahanshah.
• The districts of the provinces were ruled by a shahrab and a mowbed (chief priest).
• Sasanian rule was characterized by considerable centralization, ambitious urban planning, agricultural development, and technological improvements
• Below the king, a powerful bureaucracy carried out much of the affairs of government

 

Coinage

• The Kushano-Sassanids created an extensive coinage with legend in Brahmi, Pahlavi or Bactrian, sometimes inspired from Kushan coinage
• The obverse of the coin usually depicts the ruler with elaborate headdress and on the reverse either a Zoroastrian fire altar, or Shiva with the bull Nandi.

 

Economy, society and trade

• The economic base may be inferred from the currency.
  • Although gold and silver coins are known for several Kushano-Sasanian prince-governors, it is the copper coinage that was widely current to meet the local demands of the population.
• Trade continued in the Silk Route as in the earlier period

 

Languages and scripts

• In the state of the Kushanshahs, apart from high officials and military personnel, there were inevitably natives of Iran, including both scribes and marginally literate persons.
  • So, It is natural that they wrote their Middle Persian in Pahlavi script.
  • Hence, some issues of the Kushano- Sasanian coinage (see above) have Middle Persian inscriptions in Pahlavi script.
• Most inscriptions of the Kushan and Kushano-Sasanian periods come from Termez, in particular from the Buddhist monasteries of Kara-tepe and Fayaz-tepe.
  • They are written in the Kharosthi and Brahmıi scripts.

 

Architecture

• Kara-tepe (Presently in Uzbekistan) presents a typical model of cultural material that is syncretistic in nature.
  • The excavations here, have brought to light wall paintings, stone and stucco (ganch in local terminology), sculpture, terracottas, and pottery, metal ware and coins, inscriptions on pottery and graffiti on the walls of the caves and their entrance niches
  • The structures constitute a complex of caves, a courtyard and some grand

buildings.

• Many other cities and settlements are known where life developed in the Kushano-Sasanian period on the territory of Bactria
  • At the Yavan site in southern Tajikistan, for example, a section of a small street was unearthed on the citadel.
  • On each side there was a solid area of large house blocks with many rooms. These houses consisted of individual, interconnected premises.
• There were two trends in the art of the time:
  • Buddhist art developed from traditions going back to the art of Gandhara with local features,
  • Whereas non-Buddhist art displayed a complex fusion of local and Sasanian traditions. This feature is well seen in the sculptures and wall-paintings from Dilberjin.

 

Legacy

• The great strength of Sassanid culture was that it openly drew on, and inter-acted with, the cultures with which it enjoyed contact, creating a synthesis.
• Following the collapse of the Sassanid Empire, when Islam supplanted Zoroastrianism, Zoroastrians became a persecuted minority. A number of them chose to emigrate.
  • One group of those refugees landed in present Gujarat, where they were allowed greater freedom to observe their old customs and to preserve their faith.
• Later, the descendants of those Zoroastrians, now known as the Parsis, would play a significant role in the development of India.