SHAKAS

SHAKAS

The Greco-Bactrian kingdoms, however, did not long sur­vive. Bactria itself was occupied by the Parthians early in the second half of the second century BC, and the Greeks were confined to their possessions in India and Afghanistan. Then fresh invaders appeared from the north. A complex chain of causes, climatic and political, led to new move­ments of the peoples of Central Asia. The consolidation of the Chinese Empire under the great emperor Shih Huang TI (247-210 BC), the building of the Great Wall of China, and perhaps also the drying up of the Central Asian pasture lands, had driven large bands of nomads westwards, from the confines of China to the region east of the Caspian. 5001 a nomadic people, called by the Chinese Yueh-chih, wel'l bearing heavily on the Scythian tribesmen on the border: of Bactria. The Scyths or the Shakas were driven by thl pressure from the north and east to attack Bactria, whid they occupied, soon to be followed by the Yueh-chih.

ThE Shakas moved on from Bactria to attack first the Parthiar rulers of Iran and then the Greeks in India. By the middlE of the first century BC only a few petty Greek chiefs stil ruled in India, and the power of the Shakas reached as fal as Mathura. The Shakas continued the earlier practice 01 issuing coins with inscriptions in Greek and Prakrit. ThE earliest of their kings known; to have ruled in India was Manes (circa 80 BC).

There were five branches of the Shakas with their seats of power in different parts of India and Afghanistan. One branch of the Shakas settled in Afghanistan, the second in Punjab with Taxila as its capital, the third in Mathura, where it ruled for about two centuries, the fourth in western India which continued till the fourth century AD, and the fifth in the upper Deccan.