INTRODUCTION

THE few and disconnected facts that have been gleaned concerning
the Greek principalities in Bactria and Indias have come almost
entirely from the study of their coins. But we have more detailed
information about the time and immediate cause of their fall.
Occasional notices in Strabo and Justin give us the "bare informa-
tion that an irruption of Scythian tribes of various names—Asii,
Pasiani, Tochari, and Sakarauli—made an end of the Greek dominion
in Bactria and Sogdiana. The classical notices have been thoroughly
discussed "by J. Marquart in his brilliant work EranSahr (Berlin,
1901), a historical geography of the old Indo-Scythlan territories
between the Oxus and Indus. For more precise data as to the time
of this event, the true origin of the tribes which finally supplanted
Greek rule, and the spread of their power towards India, we have
to turn to other sources of information, namely the records preserved
for us in the annals of the Chinese dynasty of the Hans.

"A statement recorded during the period of the Former Han
Dynasty (206 B.C.-A.D. 24) clearly identifies the Great Yue-chi
people (Ta~Yue~cki) with the invaders of Bactria in the second
century before the Christian era. Originally, so the text asserts,
the Great Yue-chi lived a nomad life beyond the north-western
frontiers of China. With their flocks they moved hither and thither
over those vast tracts like their neighbours, the hordes of the
Hiung-nu. In 201 B.c., and again in 165 B.C., they were attacked
by the same powerful Hiung-nu, the Huns of later days. On the
last occasion their king was slain, and his skull turned into a drinking
bowl, and the Yue-chi themselves., driven to forsake their camping
grounds, wandered far to the west. Here, after a victory over the
Ta-hia, the nation occupying Bactria, the Great Yue-chi settled down,
in the tracts north of the Oxus. It was there that the Chinese envoy
Chang-k'ian, on Ms famous mission which first opened up a know-
ledge of the 'Western Regions' to the Chinese, came across them
in 126 B. c. Some time after his visit, in what year does not
definitely appear, the Great Yue-chi crossed the Oxus, and made
themselves masters of the Ta-hia capital south of that river. The
territory they thus secured was bounded to the west by the A-si,