Indo-Scythian Kingdom

• 1. Introduction

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  The Indo-Scythian Kingdom began with horsemen. Nomadic peoples of Iranic Scythian origin, they rode out of Central Asia and into the Indian subcontinent across a span that lasted from the middle of the second century BCE to the fourth century CE. Who were they, where did they come from, and how did a people defined by movement end up ruling settled cities from Taxila to Gujarat? Those are the questions this documentary sets out to answer.

  Their first king in the Indian subcontinent, Maues, appears in the historical record around 85 BCE. He took Gandhara and the Indus Valley by force. Within a generation, his successors had pushed that foothold into something far larger, overrunning the Indo-Greeks who had governed the northwest since Alexander's campaigns. The story of the Indo-Scythians is not simply one of conquest. It is a story of absorption, of a nomadic people who gradually took on the religious practices, artistic styles, and political institutions of the lands they entered, while leaving their own distinctive mark on coins, sculptures, and inscriptions scattered from Pakistan to the outskirts of Pataliputra.

• 2. Origins on the Steppe

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  Saka is more a generic term than a name for a specific state or ethnic group. Saka tribes stretched across a cultural continuum of early nomads from Xinjiang to the Black Sea, sharing horse-nomad practices, chariot warfare, horse sacrifice, and burial in mound tombs called kurgans. The Greek historian Herodotus described closely related peoples in the fourth book of his History. The name Saka is an Iranian word that scholars treat as equivalent to the Greek Scythes, which is why researchers often speak of a single Saka-Scythian world.

  The ancestors of the Indo-Scythians are generally believed to have been Saka and Kamboja tribes. The Saka of western India spoke a language also known as Khotanese, first documented in the Tarim Basin. Their presence reaches even earlier than their Indian kingdoms. During the Achaemenid conquest of the Indus Valley around 515 BCE, the Saka probably participated alongside Bactrians, Parthians, and Sogdians in the invasion of northwest India. Centuries later, when Chandragupta Maurya moved to seize the throne of Magadha around 320 BCE, the Mudrarakshasa records that his alliance included Shaka-Yavana-Kamboja-Parasika-Bahlika forces. The Saka were already embedded in the political calculations of the subcontinent long before they carved out their own kingdoms.

  One persistent scholarly hypothesis connects the Shakya clan of Gautama Buddha to Scythian origins, pointing to the shared root of the Indian ethnonym Shakya and the word Scythian. Scholars including Michael Witzel and Christopher I. Beckwith have advanced this view, partly to explain the strong Saka support of Buddhism in India. Other scholars, such as Johannes Bronkhorst, have pushed back on grounds of slim evidence. The debate remains open, but the Saka affinity for Buddhism proved durable regardless of its deeper roots.

• 3. The Domino That Started It All

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  Modu Shanyu of the Xiongnu struck the first blow, attacking the Yuezhi around 175 BCE and expelling them from their homeland between the Qilian Shan and Dunhuang. The Yuezhi fled west to the Ili River region, and in doing so displaced the Saka, who migrated south into Ferghana and Sogdiana. Chinese historical chronicles, which refer to the Saka as "Sai," record the event plainly: the Yuezhi attacked the king of the Sai, who moved a considerable distance to the south, and the Yuezhi then occupied his lands.

  Sometime after 155 BCE, the Yuezhi were again defeated, this time by an alliance of the Wusun and the Xiongnu. Pushed south once more, they displaced Scythians who then migrated toward Bactria and present-day Afghanistan. A tribe known to Greek writers as the Sacaraucae, probably from the Old Persian phrase meaning "nomadic Saka," together with their Massagetae allies, came into conflict with the Parthian Empire between 138 and 124 BCE. The Sacaraucae-Massagetae alliance won several battles and killed the Parthian kings Phraates II and Artabanus I. The Saka were not simply pushed out of Central Asia. They were powerful enough to kill empires along the way.

  This cascade of displacement eventually brought a portion of the Saka to Drangiana, a region of southwestern Afghanistan and southeastern Iran later called Sakastan or Sistan. The Arsacid emperor Mithridates II, who ruled roughly 123-88/87 BCE, pursued an aggressive military policy that seized western Bactria from the Indo-Scythians, adding further pressure. Isidore of Charax, writing in "The Parthian Stations," documents the Saka presence in Sakastan in the first century BCE. He lists four cities there, including Sigal, which served as the royal residence of the Sacae, bordered by Greek cities to the east and Parthian-controlled territory to the south.

• 4. Maues and the First Kingdom

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  Petroglyphs left by Saka soldiers at river crossings in Chilas and on the Sacred Rock of Hunza in Pakistan let scholars trace the route Maues used to cross the Karakoram mountains and capture Taxila from the Indo-Greek king Apollodotus II. Maues first conquered Gandhara and Taxila in present-day Afghanistan and Pakistan around 80 BCE. His reign is dated approximately 85-60 BCE. He is the first confirmed Saka king in the Indian subcontinent.

  Maues ruled alongside Vonones, whose reign is dated roughly 75-65 BCE. Coins of Maues show Greek gods forming the vitarka mudra, a gesture borrowed from Indo-Greek practice since Menander I, as well as the Buddhist lion symbol. This dual visual vocabulary, Greek on the obverse, Kharoshthi script on the reverse, describes a kingdom that was learning to speak several cultural languages at once.

  After Maues died, his kingdom disintegrated. The Indian king Vikrama retook Ujjain from the Indo-Scythians and celebrated his victory by establishing the Vikrama era in 58 BCE. Indo-Greek kings Apollodotus II and Hippostratos again ruled and prospered in the region, their coins appearing in quantity. Not until 55 BCE, when Azes I defeated Hippostratos, did the Indo-Scythians reclaim firm control of northwestern India. Azes' reign also produced an unexpected archaeological connection: coins of Azes were placed inside the Bimaran casket, one of the earliest known representations of the Buddha, used to dedicate a stupa near Jalalabad in Afghanistan.

• 5. Satraps, Coins, and Currency of Power

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  Excavations organized by John Marshall uncovered stone sculptures in the early Saka layer at Taxila, specifically layer four, which corresponds to the period of Azes I and contained a number of his coins. Several of those sculptures are toilet trays roughly imitative of finer Hellenistic examples found in the layers beneath. The Indo-Scythians were working from an inherited visual grammar they did not yet fully command.

  Coinage tells a more consistent story of ambition. Indo-Scythian coins continue the Indo-Greek tradition of using the Greek alphabet on the obverse and Kharoshthi script on the reverse. Rather than a portrait of the king, the obverse shows a king on horseback, sometimes on a camel, or seated cross-legged on a cushion. Greek gods appear on the reverse. Buddhist symbolism runs throughout: the triratana symbol appears on the coins of Zeionises, the Buddhist lion on coins of Maues and Azes II, and the vitarka mudra gesture on the depictions of Zeus on Maues' coins.

  The Mathura region fell to Indo-Scythian conquest around 60 BCE. Among its satraps were Hagamasha, Hagana, and then Rajuvula. Rajuvula apparently eliminated Strato II, the last Indo-Greek king, around 10 CE and took his capital city Sagala. The Mathura lion capital, a sandstone capital dating to the first century CE and inscribed in Kharoshthi script, records the gift of a stupa relic by Rajuvula's queen Nadasi Kasa. The capital also names Kharahostes and Queen Ayasia, describing her as the chief queen of the satrap Rajuvula. Kharahostes' own coins attest that his father Arta was the brother of King Maues himself, threading the ruling dynasty back to the very beginning of Indo-Scythian power. Coinage of the period under Rajuvula, though, deteriorates noticeably: the silver content drops and the bronze content rises, suggesting the kingdom was running low on resources near its end around 20 CE.

• 6. Buddhism and the Devotee Warriors

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  Indravarman, while still a prince in 5-6 CE, dedicated the Bajaur casket, now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Patika Kusulaka, who ruled roughly 25 BCE to 10 CE, recorded his donation of a relic of the Buddha Shakyamuni to a Buddhist monastery on the Taxila copper plate. Kharahostes, active roughly 10 BCE to 10 CE, is mentioned on the Mathura lion capital and on a reliquary; his coins were also found inside the Bimaran casket, now in the British Museum. Vijayamitra, who ruled from roughly 12 BCE to 15 CE, dedicated a Buddhist reliquary and placed the triratna symbol on his coins.

  At the Butkara Stupa in Swat, an Italian archaeological team found an Indo-Corinthian capital of a Buddhist devotee in foliage, with a reliquary and coins of Azes buried at its base, dating the sculpture to around 20 BCE. A contemporary pilaster showing a Buddhist devotee in Greek dress was found at the same location. Reliefs there show Indo-Scythians in characteristic tunics and pointed hoods standing alongside figures of the Buddha.

  In the Buddhist friezes at Buner, Indo-Scythian soldiers wear loose tunics with trousers and carry heavy, straight swords. Some form the karana mudra with their right hand to ward off evil spirits. In these same friezes, figures in Greek attire appear alongside them, hinting at the intermingling of the two populations. In another Gandharan relief, soldiers of the same type play musical instruments and dance; in Gandharan art, Indo-Scythians are typically depicted as reveling devotees rather than conquerors. The Taxila copper plate records that Kharapallana and Vanaspara, known from an inscription at Sarnath dated to the third year of Kanishka's reign around 130 CE, pledged allegiance to the Kushans while maintaining their roles as satraps.

• 7. Decline and the Western Satraps

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  Rudradaman I's exploits are inscribed in the Junagadh rock inscription. He conquered the Yaudheyas and defeated the Satavahana Empire during his campaigns. The Western Satraps controlled Kathiawar and Gujarat until the fifth century, long after Indo-Scythian rule had collapsed elsewhere in the northwest.

  The power of the Saka began declining in the second century CE after Gautamiputra Satakarni, the Satavahana emperor, defeated the Indo-Scythians. The final blow fell when the last Western Satrap, Rudrasimha III, was defeated by the Gupta emperor Chandragupta II, also known as Vikramaditya, in 395 CE. Indo-Scythian coinage had remained of fairly high quality through the Western Satraps into the fourth century, even as the political order that produced it was narrowing.

  In Indian literature, the Indo-Scythians were called Shaka, a variation of the Persian name Saka. The Puranas, the Manusmriti, the Ramayana, the Mahabharata, and several other texts name them. The Mahabharata contains prophetic verses warning that Mlechha kings of the Shakas, Yavanas, Kambojas, and Bahlikas shall rule the earth un-righteously in the Kali Yuga. H. C. Raychaudhury, examining references to warring Saka hordes in the Balakanda of the Ramayana, placed the date of that text at or after the second century CE. The stone palettes found only in Indo-Greek, Indo-Scythian, and Indo-Parthian archaeological layers, and absent from both the preceding Mauryan layers and the succeeding Kushan layers, mark in material form exactly where the Indo-Scythians stood in time. A palette from Sirkap, now in the New Delhi Museum, shows a winged Indo-Scythian horseman riding a winged deer and being attacked by a lion. It is one of the few surviving works of art that scholars agree indisputably represents this people.