Page:History of India Vol 2.djvu/260

 222 THE KUSHAN OR INDO - SCYTHIAN DYNASTY For the next century nothing is known about Yueh- chi history; but more than a hundred years after the division of the nation into five territorial principalities situated to the north of the Hindu Kush, the chief of the Kushan section of the horde, who is conventionally known to European writers as Kadphises I, succeeded in imposing his authority on his colleagues and estab- lishing himself as sole monarch of the Yueh-chi nation. His accession as such may be dated in the year 45 A. D., which cannot be very far wrong. The pressure of population upon the means of sub- sistence, which had impelled the Yueh-chi horde to undertake the long and arduous march from the bor- ders of China to the Hindu Kush, now drove it across that barrier, and stimulated Kadphises I to engage in the formidable task of subjugating the provinces to the south of the mountains. He made himself master of Ki-pin (Kashmir?) as well as of the Kabul territory, and, in the course of a long reign, consolidated his power in Bactria, and found time to attack the Parthians. His empire thus extended from the frontiers of Persia to the Indus, and included Sogdiana, now the Khanate of Bukhara, with probably all the territories comprised in the existing kingdom of Afghanistan. The complete subjugation of the hardy mountaineers of the Afghan highlands, who have withstood so many invaders with success, must have occupied many years, and cannot be assigned to any particular year, but 60 A. D. may be taken as a mean date for the conquest of Kabul.