The early history of India from 600 B.C. to the Muhammadan conquest; including the invasion of Alexander the Great

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1908 Excerpt: ...death by driving them from the lands which they had wrested from the Sakas. Being thus forced to resume their march, the Yueh-chi moved into the valley of the Oxus, and reduced to subjection its peaceful inhabitants, known to the Chinese as Ta-hia. The political domination of the Yueh-chi probably was extended at once over Bactria, to. the south of the Oxus, but the headquarters of the horde continued for many years to be on the north side of the river, and the pastures on that side sufficed for the wants of the new comers. In the course of time, which may be estimated at two or three generations, the Yueh-chi lost their nomad habits; and became a settled, territorial nation, in actual occupation of the Bactrian lands south of the river, as well as of Sogdiana to the north, and were divided into five principalities. As a rough approximation to the truth, this political and social development, with its accompanying growth of population, may be assumed to have been completed about 70 B. c. For the next century nothing is known about Yueh-chi history; but more than a hundred years after the division of the nation into five territorial principalities situated to the north of the Hindu Rush, the chief of the Kushan section of the horde, who is conventionally known to European writers as Kadphises I, succeeded in imposing his authority on his colleagues, and establishing himself as sole monarch of the Yueh-chi nation. His accession as Such may be dated approximately in the year 45 A.d., which cannot be very far wrong.1 Unification of Yueh-chi kingdom. 45 A. n. 1 For the arguments in favour of the chronology as stated in the text, see the author's paper, 'The Kushan, or Indo-Scythian, Period of Indian History,' in J. R. A. S., 1903, which gives full references to ...