We have seen in the last chapter how foreign influences gradually began
to make themselves felt in the fabric and design of the purely native
coins of the North-West. These influences gradually widened until the
whole of Northern, Western and parts of Central India were affected.
Through eight centuries these foreign types were reproduced on the
coins of those territories; and we can observe the gradual debasement
of the original models as they become less and less intelligible to
successive strikers, until they disappear in the general cataclasm that
succeeded the terrible inroads of the Huns in the sixth century. In the
secluded kingdom of Kashmīr one type did indeed survive as late as the
fifteenth century, a mere shadow of a shade, from which all form and
feature had vanished. The coins included in this chapter and the next
are those of the invaders who brought about this important change.
But a further and a greater importance attaches to them. Since the
important discovery, in 1824, by Colonel Tod, that Greek coins had
once been struck in India, the names of thirty-three Greek and
twenty-six[11] Indo-Scythia nor Śaka and Indo-Parthian or Pahlava
princes, ruling territories round the Indian frontier, have gradually
been recovered from coin legends, and not more than half-a-dozen of
these are known from other sources. Even the names of the later Kushāṇa
kings were first deciphered from their coins. Thus coins alone have
been responsible for the recovery of a whole period of Indian history.
Probably no class of Indian coins has attracted more attention or
been subjected to more patient examination than these, which mark the
first intermingling of Eastern and Western culture in India; yet,
as the relationship of the different kings and dynasties who minted
them, their dates, and the territories over which they ruled are still
largely matters of conjecture, it will be well to sketch in outline the
probable course which events took in Northern India and the adjacent
countries from the time of Alexander to the first century of our era.
In October, 326 B.C., Alexander began his retreat from the Panjāb. To
commemorate his victories he struck a medal;[12] about the same time an
Indian prince, Sophytes (Saubhūti), struck a silver coin (Pl. II, 1) in
the Greek style; with these two exceptions scarcely a mark or lasting
trace of his invasion remained. Eleven years after Alexander’s death
his general, Seleucos, founded the Seleucid kingdom of Syria. Between
the years 250-248 B.C. two of the chief Syrian provinces revolted and
became independent kingdoms, Bactria under Diodotos and Parthia under
Arsakes, both events fraught with important consequences for India and
her coinage. The fourth Bactrian king, Demetrios (c. 190-150 B.C.),
son of Euthydemos, as the Mauryan Empire fell into decay, was able
to extend his kingdom as far as the Panjāb, and assumed the title of
“King of the Indians.” But about the same time he was confronted with a
rival, Eukratides (c. 175-155 B.C.), who deprived him of his Bactrian
dominions, and even of a portion of Gandhāra (the present districts
of Peshāwar and Rawalpindi). Henceforward there were two rival Greek
dynasties, the house of Eukratides, including the princes Heliokles,
Antialkidas and Hermaios, ruling in Kābul, Kandahār and Gandhāra, and
the house of Euthydemos, of whom the principal rulers were Apollodotos,
Menander, Strato I, Zoilos and Hippostratos, in East Gandhāra and the
Panjāb. Pantaleon, Agathokles and Antimachos, of the latter family,
appear to have been petty princes ruling north of Kābul (c. 155-140
B.C.), and there must have been similar small principalities elsewhere,
whose rulers were contemporary. About the year 135 B.C. Heliokles, the
last king of Bactria, was driven out of that country by a Scythian
tribe, the Śakas, and fixed the headquarters of his rule at Kābul,
and here his descendants continued to reign till some time after 40
B.C., when the last of them, Hermaios, was driven out by the Pahlavas.
Meanwhile, in about the year 126 B.C., the Śakas, pressed in their
turn by another nomadic tribe from Central Asia, the Yueh-chi, were
driven out of Bactria, and invaded India by way of Ariāna (Herāt) and
Drangiāna (Seistān), fixing their headquarters in Sind (Śakadvīpa).
Moving thence up the Indus valley, about the year 75 B.C., their chief,
Maues, captured Pushkalāvatī (Peshāwar), and thus drove a wedge in
between the dominions of the two Greek houses. His successor, Azes I,
the possible founder of the Vikrama era in 58 B.C., finally crushed
the house of Euthydemos, in the person of Hippostratos, in the Eastern
Panjāb, some time after 40 B.C. Closely related to the Śakas were
the Pahlavas. The earlier Pahlava princes, Vonones, Spalahores, and
Spalirises ruled in Drangiāna and Arachosia (Kandahār), whence, as
already related, they overran Kābul. Later on, in the first century
A.D., probably through a family alliance, they succeeded the Śakas in
northern India and we find the great king Gondopharnes (A.D. 19-45)
ruling in Taxila. Associated with the Śaka and Pahlava kings were a
number of military governors, such as Aspavarma and Sasas, whose names
appear on coins with those of their suzerains. Other rulers like Miaos
are more difficult to place.
[11] Three fresh names have been added as recently as 1913.
[12] The sole example known is in the British Museum: it is figured in
Vincent Smith’s _Oxford History of India_, 1920, p. 63.