India Through the Ages: A Popular and Picturesque History of HindustanSteel, Flora Annie Webster
History
India Through the Ages: A Popular and Picturesque History of Hindustan
Steel, Flora Annie Webster
India -- History
The device of a camel and a bull on the reverse and obverse of a coin
minted by Kadphîses, the first Kushân king in India, is, Mr Vincent
Smith remarks, a singularly appropriate symbol for the conquest of
Hindustan by a horde of nomads from Central Asia.
These wanderers, ever pressed from behind, had come far; they had met
and overwhelmed by sheer numbers many hostile tribes. But all this was
prior to their passage into India proper. That took place about the
year B.C. 40, when Hermaios, the last of the Indo-Greek rulers, gave
way to the first Mongolian king.
It is curious to note this transference of power viewed in the light
of our case of coins. First, we find the names of both princes
preserved in the legend, the portrait of the Greek, with his title in
Greek lettering, still adorning the obverse. After a while the legend
changes, the Mongolian's name monopolises it, though the portrait
remains. Again a while, and Hermaios' face disappears in favour of the
features of the Roman Emperor, Augustus; a piece of flattery due to
the growing fame of Rome at its zenith, even in the Far East. So,
after again a little while, the coin shows nothing but that symbol of
conquest, the Bactrian Camel dominating the Indian Bull!
A pause for consideration will show us that this was no ordinary
conquest. The domination of a highly civilised people such as the
Indians were undoubtedly, even in those far ages, by a horde of upland
wanderers, veneered with a culture picked up hastily as they
journeyed, cannot have come about without much disturbance. Yet of
this we have no record. The feet of those million or more of men,
women, children, seem to have overwhelmed even their own noise and
clamour. Still, we know that the final overthrow of the old dynasties
in the Punjâb and the Indus valley was deferred until Kadphîses I. had
been gathered to his fathers after a reign of forty years, and his
son, Kadphîses II., reigned in his stead. As energetic, as ambitious
as his father, he was keen enough to see the advantages of propitiating
that great Western emperor of Rome, whose gold was now pouring into
India in exchange for the latter's silk, gems, dye-stuffs, and spices;
so, after conquering the whole of the North-Western Provinces, he sent
an embassy to Rome in order to acquaint the Emperor Trajan of the fact.
Probably we have here the first political connection between East and
West.
For the rest, was this in truth, not the golden age, but the age of
gold, for in addition to the Roman Aurei, of which numberless
specimens are to be found in our Museums, we have examples of Oriental
gold coins of the same purity and weight, which must have been struck
by the Kushân kings, as these leaders of the wanderers are called.
On the death of the second Kadphîses, one Kanîshka came to the throne.
This is a name which still has a voice in Indian tradition, and,
beyond India, is still known in the legendary lore of Tibet, Mongolia,
and China.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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