pushed westward by the Chinese who had built the Great Wall to p out nomads and to protect their villages and agriculture from their raids. The Yueh-chi, in turn, turned westward and pushed the Sakas towards eastern Iran, where the Parthians had become rulers following the collapse of the Seleucid empire. Sakas The Sakas were pushed back from eastern Iran by the Parthian ruler Mithradates and they then turned to north-western India and finally settled in the region between the Indus valley and Saurashtra. The first Saka ruler in India was Maues or Moa/Moga (c.
BCE). He occupied Gandhara, driving a wedge into the Indo-Greek kingdoms, but it was his successor Azes who finally destroyed the last remnants of the Indo- Greek kingdoms and extended Saka rule as far as Mathura. In India, the Sakas became assimilated into Hindu society. They began to adopt Hindu names and religious beliefs, so much so that their coins had representations of Hindu gods on one side.
The Sakas appointed kshatrapas or satraps as provincial governors to administer their territories. Many of the kshatrapas titled themselves mahakshatrapas and were virtually independent rulers. One of the most famous of the Saka kshatrapas was Rudradaman ( – CE). His exploits are celebrated in the famous rock inscription of Junagadh (in Gujarat).
According to this inscription, he had even defeated the Satavahanas in battle. His name indicates that the process of assimilation into Indian society was complete by that time. XI History - Lesson - - Polity and Society in Post-Mauryan Period Kanishka’s coins as well as his statue found near Mathura show him dressed in a belted tunic along with overcoat and wearing boots, testifying to his Central Asian origins. The Karakoram highway, a joint project between China and Pakistan, which was completed in , has yielded great dividends for archaeologists and historians.
The rock of Hunza mentions the first two Kadphises and the Kusanadevaputra (son of God) Maharaja Kaniska. This inscription confirms that Kanishka’s empire stretched from Central Asia till eastern India. Buddhist sources record that he had conquered Magadha and Kashmir