A History of India, Third Edition

THE GREAT ANCIENT EMPIRES

In the last decades BC the Shaka empire showed definite signs of decay
while the provincial governors became more powerful. Azes II was the last
great Shaka king of the Northwest. About AD 20 the Shakas were replaced
by the short-lived Indo-Parthian dynasty founded by King Gondopharnes
who reigned until AD 46. He seems to have been a provincial governor of
Arachosia in southern Afghanistan. Though he managed to conquer the
central part of the Shaka domain, the eastern part around Mathura seems
to have remained outside his kingdom because the local Shaka Kshatrapas
in this region had attained their independence. The same was true of
Saurashtra where independent Shaka Kshatrapas still held sway until the
time of the Gupta empire.
Gondopharnes appeared in third century AD Christian texts as
Gunduphar, King of India, at whose court St Thomas is supposed to have
lived, converting many people to Christianity. According to Christian
sources of the third century AD which refer to St Thomas (‘Acts of St
Thomas’), the saint moved later on to Kerala and finally died the death of
a martyr near Madras. These southern activities of St Thomas are less well
documented, but there can be no doubt about early Christian contacts with
Gondopharnes. In a further mutation of his name (via Armenian
‘Gathaspar’) Gondopharnes became ‘Kaspar’, one of the three magi or
Kings of the East who play such an important role in Christian tradition.

The Kushana Empire: a short-lived Asian synthesis

While in the early first century AD Indo-Parthians, Shakas and the
remnants of the Indo-Greeks were still fighting each other in India, new
invaders were already on their way. The Yuezhi under the leadership of the
Kushanas came down from Central Asia and swept away all earlier
dynasties of the Northwest in a great campaign of conquest. They
established an empire which extended from Central Asia right down to the
eastern Gangetic basin. Their earlier encounter with the Shakas whom they
displaced in Central Asia has been mentioned above. The Xiongnu, their
old enemies, did not leave the Yuezhi in possession of the land they had
taken from the Shakas but pushed them further west. Thus they appeared
in Bactria only a few decades after the Shakas and took over this territory
in the late second century BC. Here in Bactria they seem to have changed
their previous nomadic life style and settled down in five large tribal
territories with a chieftain (yabgu) at the head of each.
Around the time of the birth of Christ, Kujala Kadphises, Yabgu of the
Kuei-shang (Kushana) vanquished the four other yabgus and established
the first Kushana kingdom. The history of the further development of this
kingdom is recorded in the chronicles of the contemporary Han dynasty of
China which were compiled in the fifth century AD. These chronicles
report that Kadphises, after uniting the five principalities, proclaimed