MIGRATION OF THE YUEZHI (TOCHARIANS)
AND SAKA (SCYTHIANS)
Th e most signifi cant Indo-European-speaking group that
may have migrated into Xinjiang and the Gansu late in the
Bronze Ages was the Yuezhi (also known as the Tocharians),
who were destined to play a signifi cant role in the history of
ancient Asia. Th e ancestors of the Yuezhi were pastoral no-
mads who probably migrated to the eastern steppes during
the Middle Bronze Age. Th ey eventually found themselves
sometime in the second millennium b.c.e. occupying a stra-
tegic part of the Gansu corridor, where they exercised some
sort of commercial control over extensive areas of the Tarim
Basin. Adopting a seminomadic, semisedentary lifestyle, they
prospered through trade and achieved a considerable repu-
tation amongst the Zhou and Han Chinese because of their
wealth, prestige, and force of arms.
In the second century b.c.e., however, the Yuezhi were
forced to move away from the borders of Han China by their
rivals the Xiongnu (who may have been the ancestors of the
Huns, militarized nomadic people whose fi ft h century c.e.
migration to the west would play a critical role in the down-
fall of the Western Roman Empire). Leaving the Gansu in
162 b.c.e. and heading north into the Ili valley, they moved
into a region already occupied by Saka peoples (also known
as the Sai to the Chinese or the Scythians to Greco-Roman
historians). As a result, these Ili basin Sakas were them-
selves displaced and forced to migrate to the south along the
western edge of the Tarim Basin, before fi nally crossing into
Kashmir. Here at least one group of Scythians would rule for
up to 180 years, almost without interruption, until the reign
of the last Indo-Scythian satrap of Kashmir, Zeionises.
Th e Indo-Scythians were eventually defeated by Kujula
Kadphises, the fi rst king of the Kushans, sometime soon aft er
about 45–50 c.e. Th e Sakas then fragmented into a number of
smaller statelike divisions and spilled out into the Punjab and
northern India, establishing the signifi cant Saka kingdoms,
whose era in Indian history dates from 78 c.e. In this way
events that unfolded along the borders of Han China early
in the second century b.c.e. were directly responsible for sig-
nifi cant developments in the history of ancient Central Asia
and India well beyond the area of their immediate impact.
Th e migration of the Ili basin Sakas that led eventually to the
establishment of Saka kingdoms in northern India some 250
years later is a good example of the domino eff ect of migra-
tion in inner Asian geopolitics and of the critical role of mi-
gration in the history of ancient Asia.
Eventually, aft er passing through Ferghana and Sogdia,
the Yuezhi defeated and evicted another resident group of
Sakas, who may have been responsible for the conquest of the
disintegrating Greek kingdom of Bactria. Th ese displaced
Saka tribes were forced south of the Hindu Kush, where
they eventually resettled in Sacastan (present-day Sistān)
sometime aft er 123 b.c.e. Some decades later (ca. 80 b.c.e.)
the Yuezhi crossed the Amu Dar’-ya en masse and occupied
Bactria, where they went on to establish the Kushan Empire
(ca. 1–450 c.e.) which became major player in the Silk Roads
trade during the fi rst two centuries of the Common Era.IMPACT OF THE ARYAN MIGRATIONS ON
ANCIENT INDIA
Th e earliest evidence of human activity in India or Pakistan so
far discovered goes back to the Second Interglacial Period be-
tween 400,000 and 200,000 b.c.e. Th e spectacular Indus Valley
civilization was the most extensive prehistoric civilization of
the region and dates from about 3000 b.c.e. It was preceded
by an agrarian village culture in the Baluchistan hills and the
Makran coast. Th e Harappan civilization was an urban-based
state structure (similar to that which developed in the late fourth
millennium in southern Mesopotamia), and its two principal
cities of Mohenjo Daro and Harappa displayed an advanced
sense of civic planning and organization. By the early second
millennium b.c.e. the Indus civilization had declined, to be re-
placed from about 1500 by (probably) an invasion of migrating
Indo-Iranians (sometimes called Aryans) from the north, part
of the third wave of Bronze Age nomadic migrations noted pre-
viously. Th e Aryan (meaning “noble ones”) tribes were led by
aggressive warrior aristocrats on horse-drawn chariots armed
with good-quality copper and bronze weapons.
Th ese Indo-Iranian invaders probably set out from
their southern Russian homeland late in the third millen-
nium but may have settled for some centuries in Bactria and
the Iranian plateau before resuming their migration south
through where the Hindu Kush passes into northern India.
Our knowledge of Aryan culture is largely derived from the
Rig-Veda and it is possible to trace, through geographical
references in the Rig-Veda, the slow but certain progression
of the Aryans from the Indus Valley down the western por-
tions of the Ganges and its tributaries. Aft er possibly playing
a limited role in the decline of the Indus Valley civilization,
the Aryans took up residence in the Punjab before eventu-
ally entering the Deccan and the Ganges Valley, home of
the so-called Painted-Grey Ware culture (ca. 1100 to 500
b.c.e.)—agrarian communities based on the domestication
of crops and animals.
Th e archaeological and literary record indicates that by
the fi rst half of the fi rst millennium b.c.e. there are unmis-
takable signs of a superior technology arriving in both the
Deccan and the Ganges Valley, evidence of the invasion of
India proper by the Indo-Iranians, who soon abandoned pas-
toralism and also adopted an agrarian lifeway. By the sixth
century b.c.e. monarchical states (like Kosala and Magadha)
began to dominate the Ganges Valley, absorbing or establish-
ing dominance over the smaller republican states of north-
ern India and shift ing the focus of Indian culture eastward,
away from the valley of the Indus. Th e immediate aft ermath
of the Aryan invasions of the Deccan and Ganges Valley was
a heroic age. It is to this age that the great Indian epic, the
Mahabharata, refers in its description of a war between two
rival coalitions of noble charioteers.migration and population movements: Asia and the Pacific 705