During the 2nd century B.C. north-western India was invaded and partially conquered by Antiochus III. the Great, Demetrius (q.v.), Eucratides (q.v.) and Menander (q.v.). With the last of these Pushyamitra Sunga waged successful war, driving him from the Gangetic valley and confining him to his conquests in the west. Pushyamitra established his own paramountcy over northern India; but his reign is mainly memorable as marking the beginning of the Brahmanical reaction against Buddhism, a reaction which Pushyamitra is said to have forwarded not only by the peaceful revival of Hindu rites but by a savage persecution of the Buddhist monks. The Sunga dynasty, after lasting 112 years, was succeeded by the Kanva dynasty, which lasted 45 years, i.e. until about 27 B.C., when it was overthrown by an unknown king of the Andhra dynasty of the Satavahanas, whose power, originating in the deltas of the Godavari and Kistna rivers, by A.D. 200 had spread across India to Nasik and gradually pushed its way northwards. The Saka Satraps. About A.D. 100 there appeared in the west three foreign tribes from the north, who conquered the native population and established themselves in Malwa, Gujarat and Kathiawar. These tribes were the Sakas, a horde of pastoral nomads from Central Asia (see SAKA), the Pahlavas, whose name is supposed to be a corruption of "Parthiva" (i.e. Parthians of Persia), and the Yavanas (Ionians), i.e. foreigners from the old Indo-Greek kingdoms of the north west frontier, all of whom had been driven southwards by the Yue-chi (q.v.). Their rulers, of whom the first to be mentioned is Bhumaka, of the Kshaharata family, took the Persian title of satrap (Kshatrapa). They were hated by the Hindus as barbarians who disregarded the caste system and despised the holy law, and for centuries an intermittent struggle continued between the satraps and the Andhras, with varying fortune. Finally, however, about A.D. 236, the Andhra dynasty, after an existence of some 460 years, came to an end, under circumstances of which no record remains, and their place in western India was taken by the Kshaharata satraps, until the last of them was overthrown by Chandragupta Vikramaditya at the close of the 4th century. The Kushan Dynasty A.D. 45-225.